AFP news

FIFA is set to confirm on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 World Cup while a joint bid by Morocco, Spain and Portugal which also features matches in South America will be awarded the 2030 tournament.

Syria's new prime minister said the Islamist-led alliance that ousted president Bashar al-Assad will "guarantee" the rights of all religious groups and called on the millions who fled the war to return home.

Two suspects daubed anti-Israel graffiti and torched a car in a Sydney suburb on Wednesday, police said, sparking "outrage" from Australia's government days after a Melbourne synagogue was set ablaze.

South Korean police said Wednesday that security guards were blocking a raid on President Yoon Suk Yeol's offices to investigate his brief imposition of martial law, with the opposition party accusing the presidential staff of illegally protecting an insurrectionist.

China has expanded military drills around Taiwan aimed at drawing "a red line" for the next US president, Taipei authorities said on Wednesday, branding Beijing a "troublemaker".

For three years, Kala and her family were stranded on a remote British-US military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, trapped in horrific conditions after fleeing persecution at home.

Meeting Indonesia's pledge to phase out coal power in just 15 years and reach net-zero emissions by mid-century is a "daunting task" that will require immediate and ambitious action, experts warn.

For more than a decade, the United States has sought to keep out of Syria's political debacle, seeing no viable partner.

Pro-Europe protests showed no sign of abating Tuesday, with thousands taking to the streets as the European Union warned it could punish Tbilisi for its crackdown on demonstrators.

Israel's bombing of Syrian military assets and its entry into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights show it fears the worst from the end of the Assad clan's rule, analysts told AFP. "The Israeli government... is operating on a worst-case scenario with little to no nuance," said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East specialist at Chatham House in London.

Syrians lived in terror for decades of what went on behind the concrete walls of Damascus's security compound.

Japan's atomic bomb survivors' group Nihon Hidankyo accepted its Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday, urging countries to abolish the weapons resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Lighting his pipe, the commander barely reacted to explosions in the distance as he explained how his men were dying, overwhelmed by Russian soldiers storming eastern Ukraine despite heavy losses.

Carmen Schuster was a young woman when she left the Transylvanian village of Cincsor in Romania for West Germany in search of a better life 40 years ago.

Taiwan accused China on Tuesday of holding its biggest maritime mobilisation around the island in years, though Beijing has stayed tight-lipped over its latest show of force.

Car giant Stellantis and Chinese manufacturer CATL said Tuesday they would build a $4.3-billion factory to make electric vehicle batteries in Spain, the latest bid to boost Europe's troubled EV drive.

China's "coercive behaviour" threatens regional stability, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday, after Taiwan said Beijing was carrying out its biggest maritime mobilisation around the self-ruled island in years.

Air passenger numbers are forecast to top five billion for the first time next year and the sector's revenues will break the trillion-dollar barrier, the global aviation body IATA said on Tuesday.

South Korean authorities banned more top officials from leaving the country Tuesday, in the wake of President Yoon Suk Yeol's bungled attempt to impose martial law.

A war monitor said on Tuesday that Israel had conducted 300 strikes on Syria since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad, adding that the raids had "destroyed the most important military sites" in the country.

China is deploying dozens of ships in its biggest maritime mobilisation around Taiwan in years, Taipei said Tuesday, after Beijing voiced fury at President Lai Ching-te's recent visit to the United States.

A German property developer has sparked outrage with a plan to turn a World War II tunnel system into a luxury bunker for rich survivalists who fear the outbreak of World War III. Relatives of the prison labourers who built it under the Nazis are aghast at the business venture that is offering a crypto-currency called "BunkerCoin" as entry tokens to the promised apocalypse shelter.

A morning rally in Hong Kong and Shanghai stocks ran out of steam on Tuesday with traders tempering initial excitement about China's pledge to adopt a looser monetary policy as they awaited more details about the plan.

Chatter muffled as members of a secret society, masked and garbed in honey-coloured robes, entered the court of Foumban, the historic capital of a centuries-old kingdom nestled in hilly northwestern Cameroon.

A 26-year-old man was arrested and charged with murder Monday in the targeted killing of a health insurance executive on the streets of New York, along with other violations.

The 2030 FIFA World Cup will send dozens of football teams and hordes of fans crisscrossing the globe for matches on three continents, sparking alarm over the environmental cost.

A new Netflix series on Saudi football features packed stadiums and top-flight talent, but whether it can curb criticism of Riyadh's bid to host World Cup 2034 is an open question.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the first sitting prime minister of Israel to face a criminal trial, is expected to testify for the first time when his corruption case resumes Tuesday.

El Salvador's gang-busting strongman President Nayib Bukele has set out on a new mission: to kickstart his country's sputtering economy by inviting back the mining companies that were barred seven years ago.