AFP news

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Saturday he was ready to work with Donald Trump's new administration for a "smooth transition" in bilateral ties, as he met outgoing President Joe Biden for the last time.

Josep Borrell took a deep breath as the train rumbled across Ukraine at the end of his final visit after five tumultuous years as the EU's foreign policy chief.

Lina al-Khalil has fled her south Beirut home to escape escalating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, but she still returns daily to the bombarded area to keep the family business running.

Egypt's economy has been in crisis for years, but as the latest round of International Monetary Fund-backed reforms bites, much of the country's middle class has found itself struggling to afford goods once considered basics.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Kyiv would like to end the war with Russia next year through "diplomatic means", as both countries prepare for Donald Trump's return to the White House.

Israel launched a wave of air strikes on Hezbollah bastions in Beirut and south Lebanon on Saturday, a day after Lebanese government officials said they were studying a US truce proposal.

Gabon extended a night curfew Saturday as it held a referendum on a new constitution the ruling junta says will mark a new chapter after 55 years of dynastic rule in the oil-rich African nation.

Germany's Greens have been environmental trailblazers but their top candidate, Robert Habeck, goes into snap national elections bruised by three stormy years in government that ended in a political crisis.

A super typhoon sweeping towards the Philippines on Saturday was intensifying and could have a "potentially catastrophic" impact, the state weather forecaster warned, with millions of people at risk from storm surges.

The solo protest of Bangladeshi hunger striker Mahbubul Haque Shipon is hard to spot among the six other demonstrations under way on the same busy thoroughfare.

Questions -- and, for some, outrage -- intensified over several of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks Friday, as Washington awaits announcements for more major positions, including the FBI and Treasury chiefs.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Friday accused Germany's Olaf Scholz of playing into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin after the chancellor spoke by phone to the Kremlin chief for the first time in almost two years.

News outlets have begun quitting X, formerly Twitter, once a favourite of global media but now accused of enabling the spread of disinformation under its owner, president-elect Donald Trump ally Elon Musk.

A senior Hamas official on Friday said the group is "ready for a ceasefire" in Gaza, urging US President-elect Donald Trump to "pressure" Israel as it continued to pound the Palestinian territory.

The wife of a Russian poet jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war verses said she was afraid he could be killed in prison after he was sexually assaulted with a dumbbell during his arrest.

Juan Luis Guerra was the big winner of Thursday's Latin Grammys gala that saw the Dominican take home both the coveted best record and best album prizes thanks to his his fusion hit "Mambo 23" off "Radio Guira."

More than a year of clashes that recently escalated into war have cost Lebanon more than $5 billion in economic losses, with actual structural damage amounting to billions more, the World Bank said on Thursday.

Global stock markets mostly struggled Friday after US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell indicated a slower pace of interest-rate cuts.

TikTok on Thursday began letting all marketers on its platform use an artificial intelligence-powered tool for generating marketing clips, becoming the latest platform to let advertisers tap into the technology.

Donald Trump's White House comeback gives his ally Elon Musk a sizeable advantage in a running standoff with EU tech regulators -- who may now think twice before fining his X platform over disinformation concerns.

Britain's economy grew less than expected in the third quarter, official data showed on Friday, dealing a blow to the Labour government that has set its sights on growth expansion.

G20 leaders gather in Brazil on Monday for a G20 summit set to be dominated by differences over wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and implications of Donald Trump's White House return.

Becca Ziegler is only 24, but she already has her death planned out: her corpse will be deep-frozen to minus 200 degrees Celsius (minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit) with liquid nitrogen.

From banning tuk-tuks and barbecues to demolishing old brick kilns, Pakistan's government is pushing a series of measures to fight record-breaking smog.

Across northern Israel's lush, green nature reserves, the ecological toll of the war between Israel and Hezbollah militants is laid bare: wild boar hit by shrapnel, trees reduced to ashes and swathes of charred vegetation.

New Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's party was set for a landslide victory in snap legislative elections, initial results showed Friday.

Donald Trump on Thursday tapped anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy as his secretary of health in the latest provocative nomination from the incoming Republican president.

Israel's warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, a special UN committee said Thursday, as a Human Rights Watch report said Israel's displacement of Gazans amounts to a "crime against humanity".

Russia's opposition will stage a major anti-war, anti-Kremlin demonstration in Berlin this weekend, a vital test for a movement driven into exile by war and repression, and plagued by infighting.