WORLD

Senegal's outgoing President Macky Sall is to address the nation Thursday in a live TV interview, which could reveal a date for elections after their unprecedented delay triggered weeks of crisis.

Britain is backing outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to become NATO's next secretary general, a UK government official said on Thursday.

After the shock of Alexei Navalny's death in an Arctic prison, Russian dissidents in exile are vowing to pick up the pieces and press on with their battle against President Vladimir Putin's rule.

A Spanish court on Thursday sentenced former Brazil international Dani Alves to four and a half years in prison after finding him guilty of raping a young woman at a Barcelona nightclub in December 2022.

China said Thursday it had signed agreements to send pandas to a zoo in San Diego, after nearly all the beloved black-and-white animals on loan in the United States were returned during years of diplomatic tensions.

A cargo ship abandoned in the Gulf of Aden after an attack by Yemeni rebels remains afloat and could be towed to Djibouti this week, its operator said on Thursday.

On Day 139 of the war in Gaza, and in the greater Middle East, the Yemeni Houthi rebel militia has reportedly announced a "ban" on Israeli, American and British ships from the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea.

As a casino-owning playboy who has been married three times and faced multiple sexual misconduct allegations over the years, Donald Trump is an unlikely role model for America's evangelical Christians.

The chairman of the US House of Representatives committee on China said Thursday that support in his country's legislature for Taiwan was "extremely strong", after a meeting with the self-ruled island's top leadership.

Governments around the world are "reaching beyond their borders" to attack their own citizens abroad in order to crush dissent, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, urging more protection for them.

Israel launched air strikes Thursday on southern Gaza's Rafah after threatening to send troops into the city, where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter from around the territory.

Mechanic Zabiullah Momand revs his sports car engine outside his garage in Afghanistan's capital Kabul before letting it settle back to a purr, the cherry red twin-turbo machine pristine in a dented Mercedes Benz skeleton.

A Chinese tech security firm was able to breach foreign governments, infiltrate social media accounts and hack personal computers, a massive data leak analysed by experts this week has revealed.

With its tangle of pipes and pumps leading to a metal pot the size of a five-storey building, Japan's JT-60SA machine looks to the untrained eye like a contraption from 1970s sci-fi.

Palestinians with relatives in Israeli prisons have been deprived of visiting rights during the Israel-Hamas war, opting instead to send messages to loved ones on a radio programme.

One giant leap for the private sector? NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to ship its hardware under a new initiative called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which it created to delegate trucking services to the private sector to achieve savings and stimulate a wider lunar economy.

Baleen whales have evolved a special voice box to help them to sing underwater -- but this could also make them uniquely vulnerable to being drowned out by human noise pollution, according to new research published Wednesday.

About two dozen people died when an illegal gold mine collapsed in the jungles of southern Venezuela, officials said Wednesday as the search continued for survivors.

US authorities said Wednesday they had charged a member of the Japanese yakuza criminal underworld with handling nuclear material sourced from Myanmar and seeking to sell it to fund an illicit arms deal.

Jury selection began Wednesday in the trial of the woman responsible for the guns on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie "Rust," where a cinematographer was shot dead in 2021.

HSBC's quarterly profit took a significant hit due to impairment charges on its investments in China's Bank of Communications.

Two former nuns said Wednesday that a world-renowned artist priest made them take part in threesomes and watch porn so they would "grow spiritually".

Long lines snaked around banks in northern Kosovo on Wednesday, as ethnic Serbs waited to receive salaries and pensions in limited tranches following a government regulation targeting Serbia's dinar currency.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen argued Wednesday for creating a post of defence commissioner to lead a drive to rearm Europe if she wins a second term in office.

The United States told the UN's top court on Wednesday that Israel should not be legally forced to withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory without security guarantees.

Lawyers for the United States on Wednesday urged a UK court to block a last-ditch bid by Julian Assange to appeal his extradition there to face espionage charges.

A Taliban official said journalists were committing "a major sin" by taking pictures, Afghan media reported on Wednesday.

France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal sought to head off fresh farmers' protests Wednesday, as they resumed direct action including dumping produce and blocking roads in pursuit of their demands.

Earlier this week, @KiribatiGov gained notoriety when it responded to a snarky post on X -- previously Twitter -- where a user gently teased the Pacific Island nation for having place names like Poland, Paris, London and Banana.