AFP news

It might have been the longest wait but on Saturday 100-year-old American World War II veteran Harold Terens married his 96-year-old fiancee in Normandy, just days after being honoured on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in northwestern France.

Israel pressed its bombardment of Gaza on Saturday as a war cabinet minister looked set to carry through on his threat to quit a government under mounting pressure over its conduct of the military campaign.

At the cultural crossroads of the world, New Yorkers will experience a thrilling first on Sunday -- a World Cup cricket match hosted in a US city between Asian powerhouses: rivals India and Pakistan.

A landslide election win will embolden Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's first woman president, to defend her country's interests in sometimes-tense relations with the United States dominated by trade, migration and drugs, experts say.

Slovakia on Saturday kicks off the final two days of voting in EU-wide elections, under the shadow of last month's shooting of Prime Minister Robert Fico.

A Moscow court on Friday ordered a French citizen accused of gathering Russian military information to be held in pre-trial detention, in the latest case of a Western citizen being detained in Russia.

The incoming president of the COP29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan told AFP on Friday that his country would keep increasing fossil fuel production "in parallel" with investments in cleaner alternatives.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak apologised on Friday for leaving the D-Day commemorations in France early to give a domestic television interview, the latest self-inflicted setback to his stuttering general election campaign.

Carlos Alcaraz outlasted Jannik Sinner in an engrossing five-set battle on Friday to reach his first French Open final, where he will face either Alexander Zverev or Casper Ruud.

France will transfer Mirage-2000 fighter jets to Ukraine and train their Ukrainian pilots as part of a new military cooperation with Kyiv as it fights the Russian invasion, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday.

A British woman who claims she was the inspiration for the stalker in the smash Netflix hit "Baby Reindeer" sued the streamer Thursday, demanding $170 million in damages.

Stock markets retreated and the dollar steadied Friday before US jobs data that could play a key role in the Federal Reserve's plans for cutting interest rates, with the central bank's next policy decision looming.

As two Philippine vessels meet on the high seas to transfer a sick Filipino soldier, China Coast Guard boats shadow, block and bump them, according to video released by the Philippine Coast Guard on Friday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked allied lawmakers Friday for unanimously agreeing to back his third term in office, after an unexpectedly close election forced his party to rely on coalition partners to keep him in power.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday urged the West to do more to achieve a fair peace as Ukraine battles the Russian invasion, telling US leader Joe Biden that Kyiv is counting on "shoulder-to-shoulder" support.

The sun beats down from a cloudless sky on the town of Boundiali, where Ivory Coast's first solar power plant embodies the drive to embrace clean energy without abandoning fossil fuels.

In Georgia's oldest gay bar, Tato Londaridze carefully stepped around construction materials as he set out his ambitious plan to put a stage for drag queens on the dance floor.

Israeli strikes hammered a Gaza refugee camp on Friday after a deadly strike on a UN-run school, as the war sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel entered its ninth month.

Mothers in crimson dresses and fathers clutching umbrellas huddled together in drizzly Beijing after sending their children into an exam hall on Friday, the first day of China's biggest "gaokao" tests that will shape the futures of millions of high school kids.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address lawmakers in the US Congress on July 24, Republican party leaders announced Thursday.

Voters in Ireland and the Czech Republic go to the polls Friday on the second day of marathon EU elections, after the Netherlands kicked off the ballot with a strong showing by the far right.

In the mountainous valleys of Pakistan, 18-hour daily power cuts have meant local teacher Aniqa Bano uses her fridge as a cupboard for storing books and kitchen utensils.

Workers at tech giant Samsung Electronics in South Korea staged the first strike at the company on Friday, the head of a major union representing tens of thousands of people told AFP. Samsung Electronics is one of the world's largest smartphone makers and also one of the only companies globally to produce high-end memory chips used for generative AI, including top-of-the-line AI hardware from industry leaders such as Nvidia.

The Pacific's Solomon Islands has become a key player in the global live animal trade, with foreign collectors sourcing exotic species including some subject to trade bans, an AFP investigation has found.

It was always going to take something big to make Americans pay any attention to cricket and Thursday's stunning victory by the USA over established power Pakistan provided just that moment.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa said Thursday that his African National Congress (ANC) would seek to form a government of national unity, after failing to win an outright majority in last week's general election.

Standing in what remains of her house, partially destroyed by a Russian artillery strike, Raisa Abramtseva painted a bleak picture of her daily life in southern Ukraine's Kherson region.

A world-first launch from the far side of the Moon this week showcased China's progress in space, and Beijing now wants its commercial sector to catch up to rivals such as Elon Musk's SpaceX. Chinese companies lag far behind American frontrunners led by SpaceX, which plans to launch Starship, a massive prototype rocket that may one day send humans to Mars, on Thursday.

If ever a place encapsulated the glorious complexity and sometimes paradoxical nature of the European Union, it would be Baarle, just on the Dutch side of the Netherlands-Belgium border.