WORLD

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about Gaza Friday, in their first conversation for nearly a month amid reports of tensions between the leaders.

Outside an isolated former military base in the English countryside, a small medical team pitches up to assess and aid growing numbers of asylum seekers held there.

The United Nations said Friday that thousands of babies had been born in conditions "beyond belief" in Gaza since the war there erupted more than three months ago.

Afghanistan maintains its unfortunate position as the least peaceful country globally for the eighth consecutive year.

Israel says it still expects the war to continue for months but a US-Israeli divide over Gaza's post-war future has come into sharp focus after Washington again stressed creation of a Palestinian state as the only way to guarantee Israel's long-term security.

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out more than three months ago, residents of southern Lebanon have been receiving strange phone calls from Lebanese numbers and from people speaking in Lebanese accents.

The rare military actions in the porous border region of Baluchistan -- shared between the two countries -- have further stoked regional tensions already enflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.

An increased awareness of environmental impacts has resulted in efforts to increase the energy efficiency of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

Israel bombarded southern Gaza on Friday after it publicly sparred with its main ally the United States over the possibility of a Palestinian state, the creation of which Washington sees as the only pathway to a lasting peace.

Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed another attack on a US ship early Friday, after the United States launched fresh strikes on rebel targets over their aggression towards vessels in and around the Red Sea.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Monday inaugurate a temple that embodies the triumph of his muscular Hindu nationalist politics, in an unofficial start to his re-election campaign this year.

A deadly, days-long clash between armed gangs intensified Thursday in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, as elsewhere demonstrators marched demanding accountability for the Caribbean nation's spiraling security crisis.

It's Day 105 of the raging war in Gaza, and the conflict has already spilled over into other parts of the Middle East as Hamas allies attack not just Israeli assets but those of its staunch ally, the United States. Other countries in the region are also seeing rising tensions, specifically Iran and Pakistan.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared the South his country's "principal enemy", jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and outreach, and threatened war over "even 0.001 mm" of territorial infringement.

The United States launched fresh strikes against Yemen's Houthis Thursday and President Joe Biden signaled they would keep going until the Iranian-backed rebels stop targeting ships in the Red Sea.

The French government will temporarily ban almost all commercial fishing in the Bay of Biscay to protect dolphins, much to the dismay of the industry.

President Joe Biden said Thursday that US and British military strikes against Yemen's Huthis would continue, because the Iran-backed rebels were still attacking shipping in the Red Sea.

Ecuador's Attorney General Diana Salazar is no fortune teller, but a few weeks before narco gangs went on a violent rampage she warned the country to brace itself.

Iran is barely cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency which feels it is being held "hostage" to the country's disputes with Western countries, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi told AFP on Thursday.

Rishi Sunak on Thursday urged members of the UK's unelected upper chamber of parliament to pass his contentious plan to send migrants to Rwanda, insisting it was "the will of the people".

Generative artificial intelligence could transform healthcare through things like drug development and quicker diagnoses, but the World Health Organization warned Thursday of the potential pitfalls in rushing to embrace AI. The WHO has been examining the likely dangers and benefits posed by AI large multi-modal models (LMMs), which are relatively new and are quickly being adopted in health.

Icelanders forced from their town by a dramatic volcanic eruption face never returning home, after lava engulfed several homes in the town, something the island nation had not seen in five decades.

The post election crisis in the Comoros has intensified with the first reported death in street violence and a call from the opposition for a national day of protest on Friday against the "masquerade" of President Azali Assoumani's victory.

The head of Russia's Bashkortostan said Thursday protests that shook the Urals region this week were organised by separatist "traitors" from abroad who want to start a "partisan war".

The deputy leader of Yemen's presidential council said Thursday that its military forces need foreign assistance to launch a ground operation that would back US and UK air strikes against Huthi rebels.

Ukraine's defence minister warned Thursday that the country faced a "very real and pressing" ammunition shortage in its grinding near-two-year battle against Russia, as Western allies met in Paris to agree new artillery supplies.

Julien Sommer has been putting on a puppet show in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower since he was 15, filling his picturesque theatre with starry-eyed children and their parents several times a week.

Tens of thousands of public-sector workers in Northern Ireland walked off the job on Thursday, in what one union boss said could be the biggest strike in the province.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday picked a nationalist former member of a hard-right party to run for mayor of Ankara in closely watched March 31 local elections.