SCIENCE

The EU announced a "new era" in ties with Central Asia on Friday at a major summit in Uzbekistan, as Brussels presses its influence in the region in the face of Russian and Chinese competition.

Making incisions and carefully taking samples, the scientists at a laboratory in Russia's far east looked like pathologists carrying out a post-mortem.

Scientist Inna Birchenko began to cry as she described the smouldering protected forest in Thailand where she was collecting samples from local trees shrouded in wildfire smoke.

Australia has just sweltered through its hottest 12 months on record, a weather official said Thursday, a period of drenching floods, tropical cyclones and mass coral bleaching.

Japan wants to become a hydrogen fuel leader to meet its net-zero goals, but one blockbuster project is hanging in the balance over questions about its climate credentials.

Microsoft was shaped by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella over the course of the last half-century in the male-dominated tech world.

Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modelling suggesting thousands could be dead.

Wildfires in South Korea are now the largest and deadliest on record, having burned more forest and killed more people than any previous blaze, officials said Thursday, as the death toll hit 27.

By 2030, Coca-Cola products will account for an estimated 1.33 billion pounds (602,000 metric tons) of plastic waste entering the world's oceans and waterways each year, according to a stark new analysis published Wednesday by the nonprofit Oceana.

An "unprecedented" mass bleaching event has been recorded off Australia's western coast, scientists said Wednesday, turning huge chunks of a celebrated reef system a sickly dull white.

At least 19 people have been killed in one of South Korea's worst wildfire outbreaks, with multiple raging blazes causing "unprecedented damage", the acting president said Wednesday.

Chewing gum releases hundreds of tiny plastic pieces straight into people's mouths, researchers said on Tuesday, also warning of the pollution created by the rubber-based sweet.

America's ice-climbing epicenter was facing a bleak future, with climate change endangering its water supply, until an unlikely savior came to its rescue: a nearby silver mine.

Deep inside a labyrinthine cave in southwestern France, ancient humans who lived around 30,000 years ago carved horses, mammoths and rhinoceros into the walls, a fabulous prehistoric menagerie that has rarely been seen -- until now.

Bone and muscle deterioration, radiation exposure, vision impairment -- these are just a few of the challenges space travelers face on long-duration missions, even before considering the psychological toll of isolation.

Washington has questioned UN agencies, nonprofits and charities that received US funds on whether they have "communist" links or support "gender ideology", and other topics targeted by US President Donald Trump, a dozen groups told AFP. A list of 36 questions was sent to small and large organisations alike as part of Washington's ongoing review of its vast foreign aid spending.

A pair of US astronauts stuck for more than nine months on the International Space Station will be returned to Earth on Tuesday evening, NASA said.

In the cold, lightless Pacific Ocean deep, the seabed is scattered with metal-rich rocks coveted by miners -- and huge numbers of strange and rare animals almost entirely unknown to science.

With a few taps on his phone, Dandam Nangor knows exactly what temperature his greenhouse is at, when to water his crops and even the pH of the soil.

Mark Carney was sworn in as Canada's prime minister on Friday, taking charge of a country rattled by a breakdown in US relations since President Donald Trump's return to power.

Rules for the emerging deep-sea mining sector should take a "precautionary approach" that protects the environment, the head of the body drafting regulations for the practice told AFP Friday.

Germany's likely next leader Friedrich Merz said Thursday urgent action was needed to boost the country's under-resourced military and ailing economy, as he defended plans for a spending bonanza during a fiery parliamentary debate.

Over a year after a devastating winter wiped out virtually his entire sheep flock, herder Zandan Lkhamsuren is still reckoning with the damage wrought by Mongolia's increasingly erratic extreme weather.

Greenland, the Danish self-governing territory coveted by US President Donald Trump, votes Tuesday in legislative elections that could yield a timeline for independence, which is supported by a majority of the population.

Climate scientist Tom Di Liberto had dreamed of working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) since college.

The United States may still have the world's most powerful navy but it seems to have realised that this is no longer sufficient to reassert US supremacy over the high seas.

As Germany's Friedrich Merz gets closer to becoming chancellor, many asylum seekers live in fear of what his promised crackdown on irregular immigration will mean for them.

China's retaliatory tariffs against US farm produce from corn to chicken are designed to hurt Donald Trump's voter base, but remain restrained enough to allow room for the adversaries to hash out a trade deal, analysts say.

Global sea ice cover fell to a historic low in February when the world continued to experience exceptional heat and temperatures reached 11 degrees Celsius above average near the North Pole, Europe's climate monitor said on Thursday.