WORLD

A freshly planted Guyanese flag flaps on the summit of a table-top mountain rising from thick forests in a remote region near the Venezuelan border.

A quarter of freshwater fish species worldwide are at risk of extinction, according to an update to the global red list of threatened species on Monday, highlighting the escalating impacts of human-caused climate change on the planet's wildlife.

China's President Xi Jinping called Tuesday for a "new stage" in relations with Vietnam as he began his first visit in six years, seeking to counter the United States' growing influence with the communist nation.

Rabbi Mendel Moscowitz from the northeastern city of Kharkiv never imagined his family would be forced to flee a second war after leaving Ukraine for Israel last year.

South Africa, battling crippling power blackouts, plans to add 2,500 megawatts of new nuclear generation, the government announced Tuesday.

Aid trucks stalled at the Gaza border, hospitals treating missing limbs: UN Security Council envoys visiting Egypt on Monday encountered the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war, days after the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution.

Hostages hauled into Gaza during Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel were drugged to keep them docile in captivity and subjected to psychological and sexual abuse, a specialist said Monday.

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the hope of creating a better world after the horrors of World War II.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces questions Monday over whether his "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme to help the struggling hospitality sector during the pandemic spurred the spread of Covid-19.

Hong Kong's first district elections for "patriots" saw a turnout of 27.5 percent, the government said Monday, a record-low share for a race that had shut out all opposition candidates.

On paper, Alimja B. no longer exists in Serbia. "I don't exist in Serbia, even though I have a house there and regularly pay the bills and my taxes," he told AFP by phone, saying his son faced a similar issue.

The United Nations has only been able to reach a fraction of the nearly 25 million people needing aid in war-devastated Sudan, the head of the UN's humanitarian response in the country says.

UN leaders on Monday urged an end to obstruction hours before a deadline for a deal at a climate summit in Dubai, as oil producers resisted historic calls for the world to wind down fossil fuels.

Israel bombed southern Gaza's main city on Monday after Hamas warned no Israeli hostages would leave the territory alive unless its demands for prisoner releases were met.

Papua New Guinea's prime minister has promised to tread carefully with Belt and Road funding from China, telling AFP on Monday he would not be "reckless" with foreign loans.

The Philippines said it had summoned China's envoy on Monday and flagged the possibility of expelling him following the most tense confrontations between the countries' vessels in years at flashpoint reefs in the disputed South China Sea.

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Washington Tuesday to meet President Joe Biden and plead his case before Republicans balking at sending more money for his fight against Russia, amid warnings aid will run out in weeks.

Several Israeli soldiers were wounded when Hezbollah launched a drone attack from Lebanon on Sunday, both the Israeli army and the militant group said.

Arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan said Thursday they would exchange prisoners of war and work towards normalising their relations, in a joint statement hailed by the European Union and the United States as a breakthrough after three decades of conflict over disputed territory.

A Japanese court is due Tuesday to give a verdict in the landmark trial of three ex-soldiers accused of sexual assault in a country where still very few victims come forward.

Hundreds of migrants who cross into the United States from Mexico each day are being herded into open-air camps, where they have no access to food or water.

Blanca, an asylum seeker with two daughters, must leave the New York City shelter she has called home for the past year after Christmas to make room for new arrivals.

Israel pressed on with its offensive in and around Gaza's main cities on Friday, more than two months after Hamas's deadly attack sparked a war that has claimed thousands of lives and left the Palestinian territory in ruins.

The UN Security Council meets on Gaza Friday under acute pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and will vote on urging an immediate ceasefire after weeks of ruinous war.

Ukraine urged residents to save electricity Thursday after a power plant near the front line was hit by shelling, the first such warning this winter as temperatures plunge below freezing.

Calls mounted Thursday for calm to prevail as Venezuela said it saw a "provocation" in joint US-Guyana military exercises and vowed to pursue the "recovery" of an oil-rich region both neighbors claim as their own.

A plastic sheet rigged up as a tent, branches gathered from here and there to make a fire -- at the southern tip of Gaza, displaced Palestinians are settling in as best they can.

Turkey has become internationally isolated and must dial down its rhetoric if it wants to win key concessions from the European Union, a top European official said Wednesday in Istanbul.

The United States charged four pro-Russian soldiers with war crimes on Wednesday for the abduction and torture of an American national in Ukraine.