AFP news

US President Donald Trump asked Syria's new leader on Wednesday to normalise relations with Israel after he offered a major boost to the war-ravaged country by announcing the lifting of sanctions.

Ko Min said he found his son and daughter's bodies in the ruins of a schoolhouse in central Myanmar, moments after a deadly air strike that witnesses said came as a military jet circled the village.

Inside one of South Korea's oldest semiconductor research institutes, the cleanrooms and workshops are calm and immaculate, but outside the Seoul National University campus, a chip storm is brewing.

It is barely visible, and needs no irrigation or fertilisers: lying off the coast of Australia is a vast seaweed crop destined to curb livestock's climate-altering flatulence and belches.

Tributes poured in from across Latin America on Tuesday following the death of Uruguay's former president Jose "Pepe" Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics.

Sean "Diddy" Combs's former partner Casandra Ventura told jurors at the music mogul's sex trafficking trial Tuesday how he subjected her to "disgusting" marathon group sex sessions.

Uruguay's former president Jose "Pepe" Mujica, who has died aged 89, won over legions of fans by adopting a humble lifestyle, giving away most of his salary to charity and driving around in a sky blue Volkswagen Beetle.

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would lift sanctions on Syria to offer it a chance for "greatness" after Bashar al-Assad's fall, as he cast himself as a peacemaker in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military will enter Gaza "with full force" in the coming days, despite ongoing ceasefire efforts and the release of a US-Israeli hostage from the war-ravaged territory.

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky urged Donald Trump to help secure a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Turkey on Thursday, accusing the Russian leader of not seriously wanting to negotiate an end to the war.

A Paris court on Tuesday handed French cinema icon Gerard Depardieu an 18-month suspended sentence after convicting him of sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021.

Even the greatest human minds building generative artificial intelligence that is poised to change the world admit they do not comprehend how digital minds think.

Peering through a microscope, food scientist Raquel Gomez studies microorganisms that add nutrients and preserve tortillas for several weeks without refrigerators -- a luxury in impoverished Mexican communities.

Economic growth in Central Europe and the Balkans is expected to be strained this year by US President Donald Trump's tariff policies, Europe's development bank forecast Tuesday.

The US tariffs barrage and the bounding cost of producing games have prompted manufacturers like Sony and Microsoft to announce price hikes on consoles, in an industry shift experts say is set to last.

Japanese tech investor SoftBank Group, a major player in the US Stargate artificial intelligence drive, on Tuesday posted a $7.8 billion annual net profit, its first in the black for four years.

Three suspected rebels were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir on Tuesday in a gun battle with soldiers, the army said, the first since an attack on tourists last month brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

Japan's Nissan posted an annual net loss of $4.5 billion on Tuesday while saying it plans to cut 15 percent of its global workforce and warning about the possible impact of US tariffs.

A months-long Israeli blockade is worsening acute malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, medical charity Medecins du Monde warned on Tuesday, accusing Israel of using hunger as "a weapon of war".

Ukraine said Tuesday that if Vladimir Putin skips talks in Turkey it would be a "clear sign" to the world the Russian leader is not serious about peace, and the West should reply with boosted military support to Kyiv.

Rights groups and NGOs took the UK government to court on Tuesday accusing it of breaching international law by supplying fighter jet parts to Israel amid the war in Gaza.

Gerard Depardieu was a titan of French cinema for more than 50 years but a sexual assault conviction, a string of other allegations and several instances of lewd behaviour now cast a long, dark shadow over what was once a glittering career.

Donald Trump enjoyed a lavish welcome in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday as he opened the first state visit of his second term, with the US president eyeing major business deals even as progress on the Middle East's hotspots will likely be harder to reach.

India and Pakistan have announced a ceasefire after coming close to all-out conflict, but on social media citizens on both sides are vying to control public perceptions by peddling disinformation.

Wang Dong hasn't worked for months and doesn't plan to, whiling away his days at a lakeside town as one of a growing number of young Chinese "retiring" in the countryside.

A-list celebrity Kim Kardashian is to testify in a Paris court on Tuesday, an eagerly awaited appearance nearly a decade after masked men robbed her at gunpoint of millions of dollars of jewellery during the French capital's fashion week.

It is arguably the world's most iconic plane, an instantly recognizable symbol of the US presidency.

More than 350 figures from the cinema world including Hollywood stars Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon condemned "genocide" in Gaza in an open letter published Monday on the eve of the Cannes Festival.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Monday announced its dissolution and the end of its armed struggle, drawing a line under its deadly four-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.