Reuters

Brash, ebullient and a self-made billionaire, four-time prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was a media mogul and political showman whose financial and sexual scandals made him the most polarising figure in modern Italy.

Ukraine said on Monday its troops had recaptured a fourth village in a cluster of settlements in the southeast, a day after reporting the first small gains of a counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Thailand's prime ministerial frontrunner Pita Limjareonrat will be investigated over whether he was qualified to run in last month's election, a top official said on Monday, in another setback as he battles to win backing for his premiership.

A storm off India's west coast has strengthened to become a powerful cyclone and could hit India's western state of Gujarat and southern parts of Pakistan this week, the weather department said.

Six police officers face homicide charges in a Swiss court case that opens on Monday following the 2018 death of a Black man from a heart attack after he was pinned, face-down, for several minutes during arrest.

New Zealand's national radio broadcaster has launched an investigation and put a staff member on leave after it said a series of news stories on its website about Russia's invasion of Ukraine had been edited to present "a false account of events".

Heavy clashes and artillery fire erupted across Sudan's capital Khartoum on Sunday and residents reported air strikes soon after the end of a 24-hour ceasefire that had brought a brief lull to eight weeks of fighting between rival military factions.

Former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was arrested on Sunday after voluntarily attending an interview in connection with a police probe into the fate of funds for her pro-independence Scottish National Party, her spokesperson said.

Kyiv's troops said on Sunday they had recaptured a village from Russian forces in Ukraine's southeast, the first liberated settlement they have claimed since launching a counterattack this week.

Saudi Arabia wants to collaborate, not compete, with China, the kingdom's energy minister declared on Sunday, saying he "ignored" Western suspicions over their growing ties.

Russia's most powerful mercenary said on Sunday that his Wagner fighters would not sign any contract with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, publicly refusing an attempt by the defence ministry to bring his fighting force under its sway.

The chief of the Wrestling Federation of India, under police investigation for suspected sexual misconduct after accusations by female athletes, held a political rally on Sunday in his first public appearance since the probe was launched in April.

Iran's supreme leader said on Sunday that a deal with the West over Tehran's nuclear work was possible if the country's nuclear infrastructure remained intact, amid a stalemate between Tehran and Washington to revive a 2015 nuclear pact.

For Kherson resident Iryna Radetska, the catastrophic flooding of her city after the giant Kakhovka dam was destroyed is the latest chapter in more than a year of wartime suffering.

Polls opened in Montenegro on Sunday for a snap election many hope will bring in a new government to implement economic reforms, improve infrastructure and take the NATO member state closer to European Union membership.

An official probe into India's rail crash is focusing on suspected manual bypassing of an automated signalling system that guides train movement - an action investigators believe sent a packed express train into a stationary freight train, three Indian Railways sources told Reuters.

Four Indigenous children who were missing for more than five weeks in Colombia's southern jungle, after surviving a plane crash which killed their mother, are in an "acceptable" state of health, the government said on Saturday.

Ted Kaczynski, former math professor and "twisted genius" who came to be known as the Unabomber when he carried out a 17-year spree of mysterious bombings that killed three people and baffled the FBI, died on Saturday at the age of 81, ABC News reported.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukrainian counter-offensive operations were under way, but declined to divulge details, telling a press conference to pass on to Vladimir Putin that Ukraine's generals are optimistic.

An Olympic wrestler on Saturday criticised the pace of a police inquiry into sexual harassment accusations against the chief of India's national wrestling body.

Pope Francis' recovery from surgery is going well but doctors advised him not to deliver his Sunday blessing from a hospital balcony to avoid strain on his abdomen.

Donald Trump faces a formidable task defending against charges that he illegally kept top-secret documents upon leaving the White House in 2021, according to legal experts, who said neither the law nor the facts appear to be on his side.

Russia fired missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday, killing three civilians in the Black Sea city of Odesa and striking a military air field in the central Poltava region, Kyiv authorities said.

The Canadian province of Quebec says rain and outside help could help win the fight against more than 100 forest fires producing plumes of smoke that have left cities on the Atlantic seaboard gasping for breath.

When the U.S. embassy in Havana reopened last May to Cubans seeking visas after a nearly five-year hiatus, the once proud 1950s vintage building was in shambles.

European Union countries will try again next week to pass a deal on new renewable energy targets, which have been stalled by concerns from France and other states that the law sidelines nuclear energy.

Old rifts resurfaced in Britain's ruling Conservative Party on Saturday following former prime minister Boris Johnson's abrupt resignation from parliament, while the opposition Labour Party sensed opportunity ahead of a general election next year.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China next week for long-delayed talks aimed at stabilizing tense relations, and a U.S.

The United States urged Nigerian authorities on Friday to investigate an air strike that Reuters reported killed dozens of cattle herders earlier this year and highlighted a pattern of deadly aerial assaults.