AFP news

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.

Rupert Murdoch's audacious bid to cement his eldest son's control over one of the world's most influential media empires has failed, a US report said Monday.

Google on Monday showed off a new quantum computing chip that it said was a major breakthrough that could bring practical quantum computing closer to reality.

Donald Trump does not take office until January 20, but on the world stage he is already acting as if he is US president.

OpenAI on Monday released the latest version of its highly anticipated Sora video generator to the public, stepping into an increasingly crowded field of AI tools that has raised concerns about disruption to creative industries.

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.

As South Korean lawmakers tried to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol for declaring martial law, ruling party MPs stormed out of the chamber to thwart the effort -- except for Ahn Cheol-soo.

UK hereditary lawmaker Richard Fletcher-Vane, better known as Lord Inglewood, will soon no longer commute the few hundred miles from his country house in northwest England to the House of Lords in London -- and he is not happy about it.

Thousands of Volkswagen workers walked out on Monday in the second round of strikes in the escalating conflict between unions and management over the German carmaker's drastic savings plans.

French President Emmanuel Macron was on Monday set to hold a series of consultations with party bosses as pressure grew on him to name a new prime minister and defuse a political crisis.

A volcano erupted in the central Philippines on Monday, sending a huge ash column high into the sky as the government ordered the evacuation of surrounding villages.

Syrians flocked to the main square of the capital Damascus on Monday, AFP journalists saw, to mark what many regard as a long-awaited new dawn after the fall of president Bashar al-Assad.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top leaders said Monday they would adopt a more "relaxed" approach to monetary policy as they hashed out plans to boost the economy next year.

Taiwan's military was on high alert Monday after detecting Chinese warships near the island, Taipei said, as it prepared for likely drills by Beijing in response to President Lai Ching-te's US visits.

Squid Game is back. "Watching 'Squid Game' will not come across as something that is particularly detached from how we view the world."

Billie Fusto is not after a fat pay cheque: he is training to be an archivist and wants nothing more than "a quiet life" at home in Italy.

This year is "effectively certain" to be the hottest on record and the first above a critical threshold to protect the planet from dangerously overheating, Europe's climate monitor said Monday.

The European Central Bank is expected to cut interest rates again this week amid a darkening outlook, with political turbulence in the eurozone's two biggest economies adding to the troubled picture.

Donald Trump doubled down Sunday on hard-line campaign pledges to impose trade tariffs and carry out mass deportations, while dangling the idea that the United States could withdraw from NATO after he takes office next month.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said Kyiv needed an "enduring" peace to protect it from Russia, after talks in Paris with US President-elect Donald Trump, who warned he would "probably" reduce aid to Ukraine.

Newly restored Notre Dame cathedral held its first mass on Sunday, with Christians celebrating the return of the French capital's most famous place of worship after a historic re-opening ceremony.

President Emmanuel Macron on Friday was holding talks with French political leaders on the left and right as he seeks to name a new prime minister and find a way out of France's political crisis.

When he attends the re-opening ceremony of Notre Dame on Saturday, Macron can boast that this target has been met, dispelling the doubts of many who argued that the half decade goal was wildly ambitious.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet leaders of South America's Mercosur bloc on Friday, aiming to push through a controversial pact to create the world's biggest free trade zone despite last-minute resistance.

In low-lying Copenhagen where rising sea levels, groundwater and rainfall pose a risk to infrastructure, the Danish capital is trying to adapt and protect urban areas from climate change.

Harrison Ford was de-aged last year for "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" on the big screen, and video game makers are pulling the same trick for the whip-cracking hero's latest outing on the small screen.

The World Bank announced Thursday that it had raised close to $24 billion to provide loans and grants for some of the world's poorest nations, which it can leverage to generate a record $100 billion in total spending power.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Friday he was "confident" of deeper cooperation with the next Donald Trump administration, a day after his call with US Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson that angered China.

Europe's new Vega-C rocket launched Thursday from French Guiana and put a satellite into orbit in its first takeoff since a failed flight two years ago.