WORLD

The UK defence ministry has been fined GBP350,000 ($440,000) for disclosing personal information of 265 Afghans seeking to flee the Taliban, a data watchdog announced on Wednesday.

The Arctic saw its warmest ever summer in 2023, the result of accelerating human-caused climate change that is pushing ecosystems and the people that depend on them into uncharted territory, according to an official report Tuesday.

Some 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022, nearly 90 percent of its pre-war force, a congressional source said Tuesday.

US President Joe Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday that the country risked losing global support for its war against Hamas because of its "indiscriminate" bombing of Gaza.

Allies of the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that they had been unable to locate him for six days, and that he had likely been transferred to another facility.

Myanmar became the world's biggest producer of opium in 2023, overtaking Afghanistan after the Taliban government's crackdown on the trade, according to a United Nations report released on Tuesday.

A French frigate that shot down two drones in the Red Sea was acting in self-defence after coming under attack from the unmanned aerial vehicles, the foreign ministry in Paris said on Monday.

A freshly planted Guyanese flag flaps on the summit of a table-top mountain rising from thick forests in a remote region near the Venezuelan border.

A quarter of freshwater fish species worldwide are at risk of extinction, according to an update to the global red list of threatened species on Monday, highlighting the escalating impacts of human-caused climate change on the planet's wildlife.

China's President Xi Jinping called Tuesday for a "new stage" in relations with Vietnam as he began his first visit in six years, seeking to counter the United States' growing influence with the communist nation.

Rabbi Mendel Moscowitz from the northeastern city of Kharkiv never imagined his family would be forced to flee a second war after leaving Ukraine for Israel last year.

South Africa, battling crippling power blackouts, plans to add 2,500 megawatts of new nuclear generation, the government announced Tuesday.

Aid trucks stalled at the Gaza border, hospitals treating missing limbs: UN Security Council envoys visiting Egypt on Monday encountered the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war, days after the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution.

Hostages hauled into Gaza during Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel were drugged to keep them docile in captivity and subjected to psychological and sexual abuse, a specialist said Monday.

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the hope of creating a better world after the horrors of World War II.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces questions Monday over whether his "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme to help the struggling hospitality sector during the pandemic spurred the spread of Covid-19.

Hong Kong's first district elections for "patriots" saw a turnout of 27.5 percent, the government said Monday, a record-low share for a race that had shut out all opposition candidates.

On paper, Alimja B. no longer exists in Serbia. "I don't exist in Serbia, even though I have a house there and regularly pay the bills and my taxes," he told AFP by phone, saying his son faced a similar issue.

The United Nations has only been able to reach a fraction of the nearly 25 million people needing aid in war-devastated Sudan, the head of the UN's humanitarian response in the country says.

UN leaders on Monday urged an end to obstruction hours before a deadline for a deal at a climate summit in Dubai, as oil producers resisted historic calls for the world to wind down fossil fuels.

Israel bombed southern Gaza's main city on Monday after Hamas warned no Israeli hostages would leave the territory alive unless its demands for prisoner releases were met.

Papua New Guinea's prime minister has promised to tread carefully with Belt and Road funding from China, telling AFP on Monday he would not be "reckless" with foreign loans.

The Philippines said it had summoned China's envoy on Monday and flagged the possibility of expelling him following the most tense confrontations between the countries' vessels in years at flashpoint reefs in the disputed South China Sea.

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Washington Tuesday to meet President Joe Biden and plead his case before Republicans balking at sending more money for his fight against Russia, amid warnings aid will run out in weeks.

Several Israeli soldiers were wounded when Hezbollah launched a drone attack from Lebanon on Sunday, both the Israeli army and the militant group said.

Arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan said Thursday they would exchange prisoners of war and work towards normalising their relations, in a joint statement hailed by the European Union and the United States as a breakthrough after three decades of conflict over disputed territory.

A Japanese court is due Tuesday to give a verdict in the landmark trial of three ex-soldiers accused of sexual assault in a country where still very few victims come forward.

Hundreds of migrants who cross into the United States from Mexico each day are being herded into open-air camps, where they have no access to food or water.

Blanca, an asylum seeker with two daughters, must leave the New York City shelter she has called home for the past year after Christmas to make room for new arrivals.