AFP news

Former separatist commander and nationalist blogger Igor Girkin, better known by his alias Igor Strelkov, has been detained after sharply criticising Russian President Vladimir Putin, his lawyer said on Friday.

It took three tries for the group of Ukrainian soldiers to fire a huge shell from a Soviet-era howitzer at a Russian position in Bakhmut.

The White House said Friday that OpenAI and others in the artificial intelligence race have committed to making their technology safer with features such as watermarks on fabricated images.

Middle East powerhouses Saudi Arabia and Iran have summoned Swedish diplomats to denounce Stockholm's permission for protests that desecrate the Koran on free speech grounds.

Goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie was the hero for Nigeria to earn them a point against Canada at the Women's World Cup on Friday but there was to be no fairytale debut for the Philippines.

The old priest painted a warning on the cracked walls of his shack: "Twelve children were born here!

The world's biggest rice exporter India has banned some overseas sales of the grain "with immediate effect", the government said, in a move that could drive international prices even higher.

Australia coach Tony Gustavsson has defended keeping Sam Kerr's Women's World Cup injury secret, saying he did so for tactical reasons and to protect his star player.

Asian equities wobbled again Friday at the end of a draining week as fresh US jobs data put revived bets on two more Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, adding to ongoing worries about China's economy.

Tall, chimney-like towers rise from centuries-old adobe houses in Iran's desert city of Yazd, drawing in a pleasant breeze for residents of one of the hottest cities on earth.

Turkey's central bank hiked its main interest rate for the second month in a row on Thursday but analysts said the unwinding of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's unconventional policy was too timid to tame inflation.

The Russian high-explosive bombs started falling around the frontline Ukrainian chemical plant about three months ago.

Smoke was rising from the blackened ruins of a residential building in Mykolaiv on Thursday after a Russian missile hit the centre of the southern Ukrainian city, killing at least two and injuring 19 including several children.

The world has been buffeted by fires, dire health warnings and broken temperature records in the past week.

A scan revealed that Samantha Casiano's unborn child had serious health defects and would not survive outside the womb for more than a few hours.

Google is working with news publishers to design a new AI-backed tool to help journalists report and write their stories, the company said on Thursday.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he is still "open for negotiations" on a key clause of his hard-right government's controversial judicial reforms, as protests intensified ahead of final votes on the bill.

July 2023 will probably be the world's hottest month in "hundreds, if not thousands, of years," top NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt said Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin decided against attending an upcoming BRICS summit in Johannesburg in person because he did not want to "jeopardise" the talks, a top South African diplomat said Thursday.

Vitaliy Bylenko looked ruefully at the mountains of grain in his barn, contemplating the growing obstacles to shifting the stockpiles after Russia this week exited a deal allowing Black Sea exports.

AI will be the "defining mega-trend" for the global computing industry, the head of chip giant AMD said Thursday in Taiwan, where the majority of the world's semiconductors powering the technology is produced.

Markets mostly rose Thursday on signs that more than a year of interest rate hikes around the world was subduing inflation, giving central banks room to take a softer approach to monetary policy.

Russia said Wednesday it would consider cargo ships travelling to Ukraine through the Black Sea potential military targets, following its decision to exit a landmark deal that permitted the export of grain from Ukraine.

The extreme heat in the northern hemisphere is putting an increasing strain on healthcare systems, hitting those least able to cope the hardest, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Goldman Sachs reported a dive in profits Wednesday on weak merger and acquisition activity, but shares rallied as executives said an improvement could be near.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi granted a pardon Wednesday to researcher Patrick Zaki, state media said, a day after Zaki's three-year jail term sparked an outcry from local rights groups and Western governments.

Hundreds of Israeli activists marched from Tel Aviv towards Jerusalem on Wednesday to protest against the hard-right government's planned judicial overhaul, which they fear threatens liberal democracy.

The United States on Wednesday announced a new $1.3 billion military aid package for Ukraine featuring air defense systems, anti-tank missiles, drones and other equipment.

Ukraine expects its fight to regain land lost to the Russian invasion to be long and grinding, a senior presidential aide in Kyiv told AFP Wednesday.