AFP news

Israel's army has pulled out of southern Lebanese villages but remains in five positions, as a delayed withdrawal deadline expired Tuesday under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.

Feb 18, 2025

Asian markets were mixed Tuesday with Hong Kong resuming its tech-led rally after a meeting between President Xi Jinping and China's top business leaders fanned hopes that a long-running crackdown on the private sector is coming to an end.

Feb 18, 2025

Faced with myriad problems including gridlocked traffic and a sinking earth surface in its current capital, Iran is considering a drastic solution -- moving it to an altogether different location on the Gulf of Oman.

Feb 18, 2025

Sarah had survived famine, multiple wars and years of displacement in Sudan's Zamzam camp and never considered fleeing, until a paramilitary attack turned the site into a "killing field".

Feb 18, 2025

A French surgeon to stand trial over raping or sexually assaulting almost 300 patients, mostly children, practised for decades right up until his retirement despite a conviction for owning abusive images of children and colleagues sounding the alarm, an AFP investigation shows.

Feb 18, 2025

Twenty-five years ago, director Park Chan-wook risked jail to make a movie about friendship between North and South Korean soldiers, striking box office gold and beginning his actors' ascent to global stardom.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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".

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 18, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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".

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 17, 2025

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.

Feb 16, 2025

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.

Feb 16, 2025