AFP news

The Sudanese army said Friday it broke a siege of its headquarters in Khartoum by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which had encircled it since war broke out in April 2023.

The DR Congo army and M23 fighters clashed outside Goma on Friday as the UK, United States and France urged citizens to leave the main city in the country's volatile east, warning the situation could deteriorate rapidly.

A senior Hamas official told AFP that his group will provide on Friday the names of four Israeli women hostages to be freed the following day in the second exchange of a ceasefire agreement.

Global stock markets rose Friday after a record day on Wall Street in response to US President Donald Trump's tax-cut pledge and his more friendly comments with regard to China.

Helicopter pilot Tim Thomas has fought dozens of wildfires all over the world, but nothing prepared him for the scale and the challenge of the devastating blazes that ripped through Los Angeles.

Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena said Friday that it was launching a bid for its larger rival Mediobanca, a potential 13.3 billion euro ($13.9 billion) deal that could help reshape the country's banking sector.

Europe should take greater risks and plough more money into artificial intelligence, Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told AFP at the World Economic Forum.

The Louvre in Paris opened its first-ever fashion exhibition on Friday, seeking to draw new, younger audiences to the world's most popular museum.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to talk to US counterpart Donald Trump but is waiting for signals from Washington first, the Kremlin said on Friday, fuelling expectations the two would be in contact.

Two buildings branded "Saudi House" and "Saudi At Davos" stand out on the chic main street of the Swiss Alpine village hosting the World Economic Forum, showcasing the kingdom's growing presence at major international events.

Bob Dylan's rich legacy of more than 50 albums is a counterpoint to "narcissistic" modern music focused on "me, me, me", the director of the recently released biopic about the singer told AFP. James Mangold, in Paris ahead of the release of "A Complete Unknown" in French cinemas, said that delving into Dylan's early career in the 1960s involved immersing himself in a different, simpler world.

With the European economy lagging behind the United States, the head of the International Monetary Fund had a piece advice for the continent on Friday: "Believe in yourself."

Hundreds of migrants in the United States were arrested Thursday and others flown out of the country on military aircraft as President Donald Trump's promised mass deportation operation got underway, the White House said.

Afghan taekwondo star Marzieh Hamidi told AFP the death threats she has received, forcing her to live under French police protection, show how effective her stinging criticism of the Taliban has been.

All signs of life have disappeared from the bombed-out houses and empty streets of the Lebanese border town of Naqura, but despite a fragile Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire that has held since November, no one can return.

In a field in southwest England where his dairy cows graze, Adam Stanbury said he feared the government's new farm tax, coupled with existing economic headwinds, will ruin his family business and many others.

On a frosty Polish winter evening, 96-year-old Esther Senot told the 100 or so shivering students at Auschwitz-Birkenau how she was a teenager much like them when she was first brought to the Nazi death camp on September 2, 1943.

Flying through Bangkok's cloudless blue skies, a small aircraft sprays a white mist over a thick haze of pea soup smog below.

Father Bashar Basiel moved freely in and out of his parish in the occupied West Bank until Israeli troops installed gates at the entrance of his village Taybeh overnight, just hours after a ceasefire began in Gaza.

A deadly knife attack on a kindergarten group in Germany, where an Afghan man was arrested at the scene, reignited a bitter immigration debate Thursday, a month before elections.

Secluded in his stronghold in southern Afghanistan, reclusive Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is the cornerstone of the movement that has ruled the country unchallenged since reclaiming power in 2021, strictly enforcing Islamic law.

Earlier this month, soldiers swooped by helicopter into a vast mining complex in western Mali and made away with three tonnes of gold -- all done on the orders of the military government.

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor on Thursday said he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity.

The families of children killed and wounded by a teenager in a knife rampage that sparked the country's worst riots in years wept in court Thursday as prosecutors described the frenzied attack.

Meta-owned Instagram has been wooing creators from TikTok as the China-based video-snippet sharing app's future remains uncertain in the United States.

For years, as disputes over names on the map riled up nationalist passions in several parts of the world, US policymakers have watched warily, trying to stay out or to quietly encourage peace.

Global stock markets mostly rose Thursday following a tech-fuelled rally on Wall Street spurred by US president Donald Trump's massive AI-investment announcement.

Donald Trump will star in an eagerly-anticipated online appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, addressing global elites whose annual gabfest has been consumed by the US president's days-old second term.

The US film industry's first major gathering since wildfires devastated Los Angeles begins Thursday at Sundance, where Olivia Colman and John Lithgow will kick off the indie movie festival under somber circumstances.