AFP news

President Emmanuel Macron faced an uphill battle Tuesday to launch fresh talks over a new government in France, with the political left refusing to take part after he rejected their candidate for prime minister.

UN nuclear watchdog head Rafael Grossi on Tuesday warned during a visit to Russia's Kursk nuclear plant that its proximity to ongoing fighting was "extremely serious" following Ukraine's unprecedented cross-border offensive.

British rock legends Oasis announced Tuesday they will reunite for a worldwide tour, as brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher ended an infamous 15-year feud.

The arrest of maverick entrepreneur Pavel Durov has drawn global attention to the importance of his messaging app Telegram for Russian troops and propagandists as Moscow's war against Ukraine grinds into its third year.

Asian markets were mixed Tuesday following a tepid day on Wall Street as traders took a breather from a recent rally fuelled by bets on a US interest rate cut, while oil held gains from a surge caused by Middle East tensions.

US tourist David Madrigal is over the moon after paying $200 for a "vintage" console at a busy Tokyo store that is tapping into booming global demand for retro gaming kit.

Near the heavily fortified border that divides North and South Korea, a monitoring device is working 24-7 -- not tracking missiles or troop movements, but catching malaria-carrying mosquitoes that may cross the border.

Swedish football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who coached England from 2001 to 2006, died Monday at the age of 76 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, his agent said.

The boss of social media platform Telegram has been arrested in France, accused of allowing the sharing of illegal content.

North Korea has unveiled a new "suicide drone", state media said Monday, with leader Kim Jong Un overseeing a performance test of the weapons, which experts said could have come from Russia.

The Dutch data protection watchdog said Monday it hit ride-hailing app Uber with a 290-million-euro ($324 million) fine over the transfer of personal data of European drivers to US servers.

Israel's military struck the Gaza Strip on Monday a day after truce talks in Cairo coincided with a major but brief cross-border escalation involving Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

France held the Russian-born founder of Telegram Pavel Durov in custody for a second day of questioning on Monday over alleged offences related to the popular but controversial messaging app, which insisted he had "nothing to hide".

Russian missile and drone strikes battered Ukraine's power grid on Monday, killing at least four people and forcing authorities to introduce emergency blackouts.

Most Asian equity markets rose with the yen on Monday after US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell said "the time has come" to start cutting interest rates, lining up the central bank for a move as soon as next month.

HMS Victory has survived the cannonballs of Napoleon's navy, being rammed by another warship, a World War II bomb, even UK navy plans to scrap her.

Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, in hiding since shortly after the country's disputed presidential election, is due to appear before prosecutors Monday in a criminal investigation launched by officials considered close to President Nicolas Maduro.

Standing opposite a mansion in the elegant English city of Bath, Tegan Shirdon marvelled at the window from where Penelope, one of the heroines of "Bridgerton", would eye her love interest Colin in the hit show.

A member of the Reuters news agency was missing and two others were wounded after a deadly strike on a hotel in the east Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the agency said Sunday, as Kyiv claimed further advances into Russia's Kursk region.

The Russian-born founder and chief of Telegram Pavel Durov was in French police custody Sunday, awaiting a court hearing after his arrest at a Paris airport over alleged offences related to the popular but controversial messaging app.

Russian-born tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov has founded wildly popular social networks as well as a cryptocurrency, amassed a multi-billion-dollar fortune and locked horns with authorities not just in Russia but around the world.

President Joe Biden's skeptical approach to corporate mergers has been a hallmark of his administration's business policy -- a stance generally expected to ease if Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The Israeli military launched pre-emptive strikes in Lebanon on Sunday after detecting preparations for "large-scale" attacks by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

In key US swing state Michigan, Democratic voters of Arab and Middle Eastern heritage say Kamala Harris is going to have to win them back, after they were alienated by President Joe Biden's handling of Israel's military offensive in Gaza.

Police arrested a man suspected of setting fires and causing an explosion at a synagogue in southern France on Saturday in what officials suspect was a terror attack, the country's interior minister said.

Two US astronauts who arrived at the International Space Station aboard Boeing's Starliner will have to return home with rival SpaceX, NASA said Saturday, in a fresh public relations blow to the crisis-hit aviation giant.

SpaceX is coming to Boeing's rescue. Because of problems with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, two astronauts who rode on it to the International Space Station in June will finally return to Earth on a vessel built by Elon Musk's SpaceX. NASA's announcement Saturday of that plan represents a blow -- even a humiliation -- for Boeing, a historic partner of the American space agency.

German police on Saturday hunted a man who stabbed three people to death and wounded eight others at a street festival in the city of Solingen, with a terror motive for the attack "not excluded".

President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed more "retribution" against Russia on Ukrainian Independence Day Saturday, as Kyiv and Moscow announced the exchange of 230 prisoners just over two weeks into Ukraine's surprise offensive on Kursk.