AFP news

Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting their countries' fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting the countries' fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

Israel was poised to again miss a deadline for withdrawing its troops from Lebanon after the military said Monday it would remain in five "strategic points" despite pushback from Beirut.

Argentina's President Javier Milei admitted making a mistake on Saturday after promoting a cryptocurrency whose value soared and then crashed, with his office announcing an "urgent investigation".

Elon Musk said his startup xAI will release its Grok 3 chatbot on Monday and billed it as the "smartest AI on Earth" in a fiercely competitive market.

President Donald Trump's decision to suspend US overseas funding could result in millions more deaths from AIDS, the head of the UN's programme for the illness warned Sunday.

Shakira has cancelled her concert in Peru's capital on Sunday after being hospitalized with abdominal pain, a setback that comes days after she launched her first worldwide tour in seven years.

European markets rose on Monday as defence stocks surged ahead of a meeting between European leaders to address Washington's shock policy shift on the war in Ukraine.

From sizing advice via selfies to robot stock-takers, online shopping behemoths have increasingly turned to artificial intelligence in a bid to stem the flow of bad-for-business clothes returns.

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sparked alarm by seeking access to a system with the US tax office that has detailed financial data about millions of Americans, US media reported.

On Kyiv's central square, hundreds of names and photographs with Ukrainian flags on them fill a memorial honouring troops killed in combat during three years of war with Russia.

The head of the World Health Organization insisted on Monday it was "now or never" to strike a landmark global accord on tackling future pandemics, despite the United States withdrawing from negotiations.

Rights groups on Monday denounced an Australian plan to send three violent foreign criminals -- including a murderer -- to live on the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru.

Israel's security cabinet was set to discuss on Monday the next phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, as top US diplomat Marco Rubio began a visit to Saudi Arabia where he will push Donald Trump's proposal for a US takeover of Gaza.

Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek upended the global industry and wiped billions off US tech stocks when it unveiled its R1 programme, which it claims was built on cheap, less sophisticated Nvidia semiconductors.

Kolkata locals cherish their city's past, which is why many in the one-time Indian capital are mourning a vanishing emblem of its faded grandeur: a hulking and noisy fleet of stately yellow taxis.

Armed with a slingshot, Taiwanese bounty hunter Wu Cheng-hua bends sideways and aims his lethal weapon up at a green iguana, one of tens of thousands in the crosshairs of a government cull.

Papal thriller "Conclave" and immigrant epic "The Brutalist" on Sunday tied for top honours at Britain's BAFTA awards with each film picking up four coveted gongs.

The French presidency said Sunday that European countries should do more for their collective security, ahead of a top-level meeting in Paris to address growing concerns over US efforts to end the Ukraine war.

World number five Jessica Pegula believes the handling of high-profile doping cases involving Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek has shown that the "process is completely broken".

Lebanese media on Sunday reported that Israeli gunfire killed a woman as Washington pressed Beirut to disarm Hezbollah, two days before a deadline in the ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed group.

A year after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died behind bars, his supporters held memorial events on Sunday, with hundreds risking reprisals by visiting his grave in Moscow.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will discuss the Gaza ceasefire with Israel's prime minister in Jerusalem on Sunday, launching a Middle East tour a day after the latest hostage-prisoner exchange.

Running late and vastly over budget, a mammoth rail project stands as a monument to what critics say is Germany's glaring failure to tackle long-standing infrastructure woes.

All other German parties see the far-right AfD as a threat to democracy, but the anti-immigration party has a powerful friend abroad: Elon Musk, the loudhailer voice of Team Trump.

Smoke billows from chimneys as factories churn in South Korea's steelmaking heartland, now under threat from Washington's swingeing new tariffs on the port city's largest export.

With Coldplay and Ed Sheeran among the superstars who have played to packed-out crowds in India recently, there is increasing talk that the world's most populous nation could soon become a mainstay of the global touring schedule.

When Germans go to vote in one week's time, after a polarising election campaign overshadowed by a far-right surge, they are expected to hand the chancellery to conservative Friedrich Merz.

Jannik Sinner's long doping saga came to an end on Saturday after he agreed to a three-month ban from tennis, the world number one admitting "partial responsibility" for team mistakes which led to him twice testing positive for traces of clostebol in March last year.