WORLD

Hong Kong democracy activist Tony Chung said Friday he had fled to Britain because he could no longer endure supervision from authorities, who had pressured him to become an informant and limited his work options.

Venezuela's state oil company said Thursday that an oil spill at a refinery on the country's western coastline was no longer "active" and that more than 80 percent of the affected area had been cleaned up.

Few players of the online video game Free Fire would know that one of their most ferocious opponents -- a lithe, gun-wielding warrior in a short kimono and fang mask -- is in reality an 81-year-old grandmother from rural Chile.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of New York on Thursday, staging a mock funeral in a demonstration against Israel's continued heavy bombardement of the besieged Gaza strip.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday ordered more than 5,600 military personnel to participate in a "defensive" exercise near the border with Guyana, in response to Britain sending a warship to the area.

The Swiss will decide whether to ban foie gras and fur imports after campaigners on Thursday handed in enough signatures to trigger a public vote on the twin issues.

A celebrity-studded "Almost Naked" party in Moscow's famed Mutabor nightclub has drawn outrage from Russia's political establishment, which has become increasingly po-faced since the assault on Ukraine.

Turkey's parliament is unlikely to hold a full vote on Sweden's bid to join NATO before mid-January, parliamentary sources told AFP Thursday.

Israeli forces pressed on with intensified attacks in the Gaza Strip's biggest southern city and a central refugee camp, after the territory's Hamas-run health ministry reported more than 21,000 people had been killed in 11 weeks of war.

India's government has recently targeted high-profile journalists with Pegasus spyware, Amnesty International and The Washington Post said in a joint investigation published Thursday.

Six lapel pins bearing the Civic Party's founding date are all Hong Kong veteran politician Alan Leong kept when the once-prominent opposition group cleared its headquarters and shuttered its doors days before the new year.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged his party to "accelerate" war preparations including its nuclear programme, state media said Thursday.

Thousands of Argentines took to the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, clashing with police as they protested a decree of sweeping economic reform and deregulation published by President Javier Milei.

The US government on Wednesday announced what it said was the last remaining package of weapons available for Ukraine under existing authorization, with Congress now needing to decide whether to keep supporting Kyiv's battle against Russian invasion.

Jacques Delors, a former head of the EU Commission and key figure in the creation of the euro currency, has died, his daughter Martine Aubry told AFP on Wednesday.

Top Mexican and US officials said that they made progress Wednesday in emergency talks on curbing a surge in migration, which has become a major headache for President Joe Biden as he enters an election year.

The New York Times sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft in a US court on Wednesday, alleging that the companies' powerful AI models used millions of articles for training without permission.

French shipping giant CMA-CGM has resumed some transit through the Red Sea, days after Danish group Maersk announced it would return as a US-led naval coalition is now policing the maritime route against Yemeni rebel attacks.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, one of the most important figures in German politics for decades and an icon of budgetary rigour in the eurozone, has died aged 81, the German parliament said Wednesday.

Russia has redirected its oil exports from Europe to China and India, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Wednesday, almost two years after Moscow was hit by Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict.

Before fleeing the advancing Azerbaijani troops for Armenia, Suren Martirosyan glanced back one last time at his fruit garden in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the momentary vision has haunted him ever since.

Israel's army chief warned its war with Hamas will last "many more months" as the military stepped up strikes inside the Gaza Strip, where more than 20,000 people have already been reported killed.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Tuesday to discuss shifting "to a different phase" of the Israel-Hamas war with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, a White House official said.

The United Nations named an outgoing Dutch minister its humanitarian coordinator for Gaza on Tuesday following last week's watered-down Security Council resolution which called for aid to be delivered to the strip "at scale."

French police on Tuesday arrested a 33-year-old man with a history of psychiatric illness on suspicion of murdering his wife and their four children, a prosecutor said.

The Kremlin on Tuesday acknowledged a Ukrainian attack had damaged a warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia in what Ukraine and its Western allies called a major setback for the Russian navy.

North Korea has opened a year-end ruling party meeting attended by leader Kim Jong Un, state media said Wednesday, with key policy decisions for 2024 expected to be unveiled.

A plane that had been grounded in France for days over concerns its roughly 300 mostly Indian passengers were part of a human trafficking scheme landed in Mumbai early Tuesday.

The Turkish parliament was Tuesday set to resume debate on approving Sweden's bid to join NATO, a thorny issue that was further complicated after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan linked it to Ankara's request for F-16 fighter jets from its ally the United States.