AFP news

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing its digital assistant Siri of listening in on users' private conversations.

European stock markets retreated Friday, as traders booked profits from a positive start to 2025 and awaited a full return to business next week.

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that US regulators overstepped their authority by reinstating "net neutrality" rules governing internet service providers, dealing a blow to the Biden administration.

US President Joe Biden has decided to block the proposed $14.9 billion purchase of US Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel and will announce the move as soon as Friday, according to US media.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit South Korea for talks next week, Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday, with the country mired in political turmoil as its impeached president resists arrest.

China said on Friday it would take "all necessary measures" in response to the United States announcing it was considering restrictions on commercial Chinese drones for national security reasons.

World food commodity prices declined by 2.1 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, the FAO said on Friday, but they remain considerably higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic.

French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo is set to publish a special God-mocking edition next week to mark 10 years since an attack on its offices by jihadist gunmen that left eight staff members dead.

Hollywood's awards season heats up Sunday at the Golden Globes, with surreal narco-thriller musical "Emilia Perez" -- about a Mexican drug lord who transitions to life as a woman -- leading the charge.

South Korean investigators sought to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol at his residence Friday over a failed martial law bid, but local media reported security forces were blocking their attempts.

Thirty-six hours after New Orleans was rocked by a terror attack, bar worker Samantha Petry wiped her tears and placed flowers Thursday on Bourbon Street, which reopened with few hints of the trauma inflicted on the iconic nightlife hub.

Investigators homed in Thursday on whether a US army veteran had accomplices when he killed at least 15 people by plowing a pickup truck -- carrying an Islamic State flag -- into a dense New Year's party crowd in New Orleans.

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.