POLITICS & POLICY

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen insisted Thursday her party can still win control of parliament despite the centre and left scrambling to block her way and football hero Kylian Mbappe urging fans to outvote "those people".

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv has been pleading with its Western partners to provide the country with modern fighter jets.

In her constituency in northern France, former prime minister Elisabeth Borne is counting on support from left-wing voters to hold her seat, even if many refuse to forget her role in passing a controversial pension reform.

Lebanon's Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and explosive drones at Israeli military positions on Thursday as tensions have soared amid the almost nine-months-old war raging in Gaza.

Britons voted Thursday in a general election widely expected to emphatically return the opposition Labour party to power and end nearly a decade-and-a-half of Conservative rule.

A magistrate Wednesday charged prominent film director Benoit Jacquot for allegedly raping actors Julia Roy and Isild Le Besco, prosecutors said, in a high-profile MeToo case that has rocked France.

France's prime minister on Wednesday urged voters to form a united front to block the far right in legislative elections, warning that the anti-immigration party of Marine Le Pen was within reach of winning an absolute majority.

Iranians will vote on Friday in a presidential runoff pitting the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian against ultraconservative anti-Western former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

Russia said Wednesday its forces had captured a district in the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been pressing for months.

The leaders of Russia and China were in Kazakhstan on Wednesday for a regional summit, seeking to harden anti-Western alliances and press their influence in the strategic Central Asian region.

The Coalition's divestment plan was met with anger from the Liberals, who said Dutton gave in to the Nationals, while ignoring Liberal values.

Between the orange trunks of the acacia trees in the Chad savannah, a herd of elephants move through Zah Soo National Park, under the watchful eye of one of the only humans allowed to witness the scene.

Survivors of India's deadliest stampede in over a decade on Wednesday recalled the horror of being crushed at a vastly overcrowded Hindu religious gathering that left 116 people dead.

Britain looks likely to see a change of government this week, swinging leftwards back to the centre ground and the Labour party after 14 years of right-wing Conservative rule.

Crowds in Kenya's capital Nairobi lobbed rocks and looted businesses as police officers fired tear gas in scattered violence during fresh anti-government protests Tuesday following last month's deadly demonstrations.

Marketa Vondrousova on Tuesday became the first defending women's Wimbledon champion to lose in the first round for 30 years as Andy Murray ran out of time in his fitness race.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged Kyiv on Tuesday to work towards a "quick ceasefire" in Ukraine that could pave the way for negotiations with Russia to end more than two years of war.

Under the Online Safety Act, the eSafety commissioner has asked the tech companies to come up with a code before Oct. 3 that will check the user's age, have safe search and parental controls, and allow users to filter or blur sexual content.

Every time Turkish farmer Fatih Sik drives his tractor across his cornfields he knows the earth could open up and swallow him at any moment.

When Myanmar's junta announced a conscription law to help crush a popular pro-democracy uprising, Khaing knew there was only one way to escape its clutches, and began planning her escape.

Raped by her husband on her wedding night aged 17, Divya described her repeated suffering -- an all-too-common account in India, permitted by a terrifying colonial-era legal loophole.

The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that Donald Trump enjoys some immunity from prosecution as a former president, a ruling that will likely delay his trial for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

At an empty concrete lot in southwest China, Loulee Wilson scoops a handful of stones into a bag -- a memento from the site where she believes she was abandoned as a baby.

Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City's Shujaiya district for a fourth day on Sunday, months after the Israeli army declared Hamas's command structure dismantled in the northern area.

French people vote on Sunday in high-stakes snap parliamentary elections which could alter France's trajectory and see the far-right party of Marine Le Pen take power in a historic first.

Mauritanians began voting Saturday to decide whether to re-elect President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani as head of the desert country, an oasis of peace in Africa's volatile Sahel region.

A fired-up Joe Biden came out swinging Friday as he tried to make up for a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, insisting he was the right man to win November's US presidential election.

Bolivia's President Luis Arce triumphed after a failed coup attempt this week, but the country has entered a new period of instability during a severe economic crisis.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday the ruling Communist Party was planning and implementing "major" reforms, ahead of a closely watched political conclave that is expected to put economic recovery high on the agenda.