AFP news

Electric cars accounted for 89 percent of the new cars sold in Norway last year, a report said Thursday, pushing the country closer to reaching its goal of going fully electric by 2025.

Saudi Arabia has put six Iranians to death for drug trafficking, the interior ministry said Wednesday, after a year in which it carried out a record number of executions, according to an AFP tally of official reports.

Swiss socialite Jocelyne Wildenstein, also known as "catwoman" due to her extensive plastic surgery, has died aged 79, her partner said on Wednesday.

Major European and Asian stock markets began 2025 in the red as investors await planned tariffs from US president-elect Donald Trump, adding to China's economic struggles.

Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol remained defiantly inside his residence resisting arrest for a third day on Thursday, after vowing to "fight" authorities seeking to question him over his failed martial law bid.

South Korean police on Thursday raided the offices of Jeju Air and the operator of Muan International Airport as part of the probe into the fatal crash of a Boeing 737-800 plane that killed 179 people.

The space in which refugee Shaharzad has to live has shrunk to the small courtyard of a guesthouse in Pakistan's capital, reminiscent of her life under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

A US citizen with an Islamic State flag and "hellbent" on carnage slammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year revelers in New Orleans on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 35, officials said.

Russia's gas transit to Europe via Ukraine stopped on Wednesday, Moscow and Kyiv said, ending a decades-long arrangement and marking the latest casualty of the war between the neighbours.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Wednesday that an Israeli air strike in the territory's north killed at least 15 people, marking what the rescuers called the New Year's first deadly attack.

South Korean investigators probing a Jeju Air crash which killed 179 people in the worst aviation disaster on its soil said Wednesday they will send one of the retrieved black boxes to the United States for analysis.

US president Jimmy Carter, who died on Monday, left an enduring legacy when he brokered historic peace between Egypt and Israel -- tepid and shaky, but unbroken even by the nearly 15-month long Gaza war.

Ukraine's decision to turn off the taps keeping Russian gas flowing via its territory to Europe has already sown trouble in the continent's east, with Moldova declaring a state of emergency and Slovakia threatening Kyiv with retaliation.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday vowed that his country would use 2025 to fight for an end to Russia's nearly three-year-long invasion by any means necessary.

A United Nations report published Tuesday found that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip had left healthcare in the Palestinian territory on the verge of collapse.

Lifelong farmer Joe Del Bosque knows that America can't live without immigrants, but he worries that many of his countrymen think it can't live with them either.

Despite political upheavals, stock markets and bitcoin smashed records in 2024, fuelled by investor enthusiasm for AI, falling interest rates, and hopes of tax cuts.

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of Kurdish militant group the PKK is hailed by many Kurds as an icon, but within wider Turkish society many see him as a terrorist who deserves to die.

Israel's devastating campaigns against Iran's regional allies have severely weakened its arch-enemy's ability to project its power, but Yemen's Tehran-backed Huthi rebels remain a stubborn thorn in its side, analysts say.

South Korean authorities said Tuesday they were investigating the role of a concrete barrier at the end of Muan airport runway in the country's worst air disaster, which killed 179 people as a Jeju Air jet crashed on landing.

Liverpool have one hand on the Premier League title as 2024 draws to a close, while it was a first half of the season to forget for Manchester City and Manchester United.

Animal ears and pom-poms on fuzzy hats adorn tourists' heads on the streets of the frigid northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, which is enjoying a surge in visitors driven by social media.

Crowds will marvel at fireworks and toast champagne to greet 2025 on Tuesday, waving goodbye to a year that brought Olympic glory, a dramatic Donald Trump return, and turmoil in the Middle East and Ukraine.

A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant for impeached, suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol, investigators said Tuesday, over his short-lived bid to impose martial law on the country.

The German government, under fire for failing to prevent a deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market, argued on Monday that the tragedy would have been hard to prevent and said that the suspect appeared to be mentally disturbed.

Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has tapped dozens of former rebels for high-ranking army positions, several of whom are foreign fighters, a war monitor and experts said on Monday.

For decades, any Syrian daring to broach political topics got used to speaking in hushed tones and with a watchful eye trained for a listener among the crowd.

Joe Biden led US presidents and other world leaders in paying tribute to Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday aged 100.

Flags flew at half-mast on Monday as South Korea mourned 179 people killed in the worst plane crash on its soil, as investigators probe why the Jeju Air plane crash-landed and burst into flames.