AFP news

Hollywood celebrities are paying the price for taking sides in the Gaza war -- plastering their social media accounts with slogans such as "Free Palestine" or "I stand with Israel".

When Australian politician Brian Hood noticed ChatGPT was telling people he was a convicted criminal, he took the old-fashioned route and threatened legal action against the AI chatbot's maker, OpenAI. His case raised a potentially huge problem with such AI programs: what happens when they get stuff wrong in a way that causes real-world harm?

The European Union failed to clinch a deal Thursday on a sweeping law on artificial intelligence after nearly 24 hours of negotiations, but vowed to continue talks the next day.

Olaf Scholz on Thursday became the first German chancellor to light Berlin's central Hanukkah menorah, in a sign of "solidarity" with Jews amid a surge of anti-Semitism during the Israel-Hamas war.

Hunter Biden was indicted late Thursday on multiple counts of tax evasion, the second time this year President Joe Biden's troubled son has been charged by a special counsel investigating his personal and business dealings.

A much-anticipated US approval of wider bitcoin trading has helped the world's biggest cryptocurrency reach 20-month heights, risking however pain for new investors unaccustomed to its volatility.

Ukraine urged residents to save electricity Thursday after a power plant near the front line was hit by shelling, the first such warning this winter as temperatures plunge below freezing.

Calls mounted Thursday for calm to prevail as Venezuela said it saw a "provocation" in joint US-Guyana military exercises and vowed to pursue the "recovery" of an oil-rich region both neighbors claim as their own.

The leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia used a rare face-to-face meeting to urge oil producers to stick to pledged supply cuts, a joint statement said Thursday.

Egypt is gearing up this month for a presidential election certain to win incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a third term in office, despite rising public discontent as the country faces its worst ever economic crisis.

A plastic sheet rigged up as a tent, branches gathered from here and there to make a fire -- at the southern tip of Gaza, displaced Palestinians are settling in as best they can.

Turkey has become internationally isolated and must dial down its rhetoric if it wants to win key concessions from the European Union, a top European official said Wednesday in Istanbul.

The United States charged four pro-Russian soldiers with war crimes on Wednesday for the abduction and torture of an American national in Ukraine.

A Guyanese army helicopter with seven people on board was reported missing Wednesday near the border with Venezuela, an official said, as tensions between the two neighbors soar over a disputed oil-rich territory.

G7 leaders agreed on Wednesday to restrict imports of Russian diamonds from next year in a tightening of sanctions over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, they said in a statement.

The United States said Wednesday that Sudan's rival forces have both committed war crimes in their brutal conflict and alleged a new ethnic cleansing campaign in scarred Darfur.

Sat in a soggy field and strapped into a virtual reality headset, Ukrainian soldier Igor was piloting a military drone test flight using a small control panel in his hands.

Indonesian authorities on Thursday said they had ended a search and rescue mission for any hikers missing or killed after a volcano eruption over the weekend that left 23 people dead.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen told Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday that the bloc and its biggest trading partner must address their differences, in the first in-person EU-China summit in over four years.

Airlines should carry a record number of passengers next year as the sector puts the Covid-19 pandemic behind it, the industry's top trade association said Wednesday, although profitability remains a concern.

European leaders met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday for talks dominated by divisions between the bloc and its largest economic partner over everything from trade to the war in Ukraine.

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, 85, was freed from prison on Wednesday after a court reinstated a pardon of his 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity.

Volkswagen said Wednesday it would cut its workforce over the coming years as the German auto giant seeks to boost its profitability and reboot a faltering shift to electric cars.

McDonald's announced an aggressive expansion roadmap Wednesday to reach 50,000 restaurants worldwide by 2027, as the chain unveiled plans to roll out CosMc's, a new network of small-format shops focused on cold beverages.

Chinese exports rose in November for the first time in seven months, officials said Thursday, as the country navigates a troubled recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Russian founder of the Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange pleaded guilty on Wednesday to operating a money transfer business that accepted illicit funds.

The US state of New Mexico filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing Facebook and Instagram of being a "breeding ground" for predators who target children.

Google on Wednesday infused its Bard chatbot with a new-generation artificial intelligence model called Gemini, which it touts as being able to reason better than ChatGPT and other rivals.

The European Union will seek to thrash out an agreement on sweeping rules to regulate artificial intelligence on Wednesday, following months of difficult negotiations in particular on how to monitor generative AI applications like ChatGPT. The EU is racing to approve the world's first comprehensive AI law after the issue took on greater urgency when the ChatGPT bot burst onto the scene last year, highlighting AI's dizzying advances.