AFP news

Jan van den Berg stares out at the sea where his father vanished seven decades ago -- lost in a storm just days before his birth.

Australian Erin Patterson served a beef Wellington lunch that was "delicious" by all accounts, using eye fillet steak, flakey golden pastry, and the deadliest mushrooms known to man.

An Australian woman murdered her husband's parents and aunt by lacing their beef Wellington lunch with toxic mushrooms, a jury found Monday at the climax of a trial watched around the world.

The elegant 74-year-old Russian put her hand on her heart as the verdict fell.

Rescuers in Texas raced against time Sunday to find dozens of missing people, including children, swept away by flash floods that killed at least 78 people, with forecasters warning of new deluges.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Sunday his group would not surrender or lay down its weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure on the Lebanese militants to disarm.

Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are set to resume Sunday in Doha for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal, ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

Calling himself a "simple Buddhist monk" who usually didn't celebrate birthdays, the Dalai Lama marked his 90th on Sunday by praying for peace after China insisted it would have final say on who succeeded the Tibetan spiritual leader.

In the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the landscape has been transformed after Israeli army bulldozers ploughed through its two refugee camps in what the military called a hunt for Palestinian militants.

Over two years, Rebecca Atkins filed more than 250 job applications, and felt like every one was going into a gaping chasm -- one opened by the highest unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the United States in more than a decade.

In 2019, American musician Jon Dee Graham suffered a heart attack that left him "dead" for several minutes -- a scare that inspired his album, "Only Dead For a Little While."

Heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne brought down the curtain on his stellar career with Black Sabbath on Saturday, rattling through the band's most iconic songs in front of an adoring hometown crowd.

Rescuers were on Saturday searching for more than 20 girls missing from a riverside summer camp in the US state of Texas, after torrential rains caused devastating flooding that killed 24 people -- with more rain on the way.

The River Seine reopened to swimmers in Paris on Saturday morning, marking the first time since 1923 that bathers could take a dip in the iconic waterway following a years-long cleanup effort.

Rescuers were desperately searching for at least 20 girls missing from a riverside summer camp, officials said Friday, after torrential rains caused a "catastrophic" flash flood that killed at least 24 people as it swept through south-central Texas.

BRICS leaders will meet in Rio de Janeiro from Sunday, with the bloc depleted by the absence of China's Xi Jinping, who is skipping the annual summit of emerging economies for the first time in 12 years.

British pop legends Oasis kicked off a hotly anticipated worldwide reunion tour in Cardiff on Friday, commencing an unlikely comeback few thought possible nearly 16 years after last performing together.

Hamas said Friday it was holding consultations with other Palestinian groups on a proposed truce with Israel, in a possible sign that it was preparing for negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire.

The Kremlin said on Friday that it sees no immediate diplomatic way out of the war in Ukraine, hours after launching its largest ever drone and missile barrage of the invasion.

In a riverine battleground in western Myanmar, an entrepreneur hunts for reception using a makeshift bamboo antenna, his payphone kiosk providing locals a lifeline to connect with their loved ones.

Pope Leo XIV heads off on holiday on Sunday, having spent his first two months as Catholic leader rebuilding unity and bolstering tradition after his predecessor's unorthodox papacy.

UN rights expert Francesca Albanese on Thursday denounced companies she said "profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide", in a report that provoked a furious response from Israel.

Liverpool forward Diogo Jota and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday, police said, sparking widespread grief just after the Portugal star had got married.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 69 people on Thursday, including 15 in a strike on a school sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war nearing its 22nd month.

Stocks struggled in Asia on Thursday as investors gave a lukewarm reception to the US-Vietnam trade deal, while the dollar held losses ahead of key US jobs data that could impact Federal Reserve interest rates plans.

Donald Trump's signature tax and spending bill was in limbo early Thursday as Republican leaders in the US Congress scrambled to win over a group of rebels threatening to torpedo the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda.

When an Indonesian mother dropped off her daughter at school in May, she did not expect her to become violently sick after eating lunch from the government's new billion-dollar free meal programme.

Ukraine appealed to the United States for clarity on Wednesday after it was caught off-guard by a White House announcement that Washington was halting some arms shipments to the war-battered country.

Iran on Wednesday officially suspended its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, a move the world body described as "obviously concerning".