AFP news

Cricket ventures into uncharted territory on Saturday as the first ever major tournament to be staged in the United States gets under way in Texas with the opening game of the T20 World Cup.

Donald Trump on Thursday became the first former US president ever convicted of a crime after a New York jury found him guilty on all charges in his hush money case, months before an election that could see him yet return to the White House.

Humanity is in a race against time to harness the colossal emerging power of artificial intelligence for the good of all, while averting dire risks, a top UN official said Thursday.

Oil giant Saudi Aramco said on Thursday it plans to sell 1.545 billion shares worth more than $10 billion in one of the biggest such offerings in recent years.

Mexico's outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is a veteran leftist and self-proclaimed anti-corruption fighter who remains widely popular after nearly six years in office.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and nearly two dozen Democrats called on the Justice Department Thursday to investigate the oil and gas industry over allegations of price-fixing.

Social media giant Meta says its bid to thwart coordinated disinformation campaigns created through ever-improving generative AI is working, despite widespread concerns.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg pushed at the start of a meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers on Thursday to let Ukraine use Western weapons to strike inside Russia, a move sought by Kyiv but opposed for now by its chief backer Washington.

Spain's parliament gave the final green light to a controversial amnesty bill for Catalan separatists Thursday, paving the way for the return of their figurehead Carles Puigdemont after years of self-imposed exile.

A second French actor has filed a legal complaint against arthouse film director Benoit Jacquot accusing him of rape, including when she was a minor, she and her lawyer said.

Authorities arrested four people and took down or disrupted more than 100 servers in the "largest ever" operation against botnets that deploy ransomware, Europol said Thursday.

On the face of it, the villain from "Shrek", British singer turned TV presenter Cilla Black, and national service have nothing in common.

Rafah residents reported intense artillery shelling and gunfire Thursday in Gaza's far-southern city after Israel said it had seized a strategic corridor on the Palestinian territory's border with Egypt.

A Hong Kong court found 14 people guilty of subversion on Thursday in the biggest case against pro-democracy campaigners since China imposed a national security law to crush dissent.

Google will invest $2 billion in Malaysia to house the firm's first data centre in the country, the government said Thursday, making it the latest tech titan to pump cash into the region in search of growth opportunities.

At a Tehran cafe, Hamid waves his mobile around hoping to latch onto a faint signal and thus bypass Iran's stringent ban on the latest models of iPhone.

The EU faces a delicate balancing act as it prepares to rev up taxes on Chinese electric cars to protect European industry, while steering clear of a US-style showdown with Beijing that could spark a trade war.

Almost every Indian meal requires an onion -- one of the cooking essentials along with sugar and lentils that sweet-talking politicians use to curry favour with their voters by lowering costs.

Boeing is expected to deliver on Thursday a "comprehensive action plan" required by US air safety regulators after a near-catastrophic incident in January.

A bid for wholesale reform of New Zealand rugby's governing body was rejected by heartland unions on Thursday, threatening to throw the game into disarray in the rugby-mad nation.

Novak Djokovic believes he's moving in a "positive direction" as he targets a place in the last 32 of the French Open on Thursday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Thursday for a peace conference on the war between Israel and Hamas, as he addressed Arab leaders at a forum aimed at bolstering ties with the region.

The Australian government was on Thursday investigating claims by a hacking group to have stolen the details of 560 million customers from global events giant Ticketmaster, with the FBI offering its assistance.

The British parliament dissolved on Thursday ahead of a July 4 general election, which looks set to bring Labour to power after 14 years of Conservative rule.

North Korea fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles early Thursday, Seoul's military said, hours after Pyongyang sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons across the border to punish South Korea.

A gunman shot dead an aspiring mayor at a rally Wednesday in southern Mexico, marking a bloody end to campaigning in a country expected to elect its first woman president this weekend.

One runs an aerospace parts maker, the other works in a restaurant near a major new oil refinery -- both women will vote in Mexican elections this weekend, but they could be from different countries.

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday raised its yearly growth forecast for China, but warned that Beijing's industrial policy risks a "misallocation" of resources and could harm trade.

Haiti's transitional government council on Tuesday named a new prime minister to lead the violence-hit Caribbean nation, council members said, choosing Garry Conille, who briefly served in that role from 2011 to 2012.