WORLD

Iran will not resume negotiations with the United States on its nuclear programme while President Donald Trump applies his "maximum pressure" policy, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told AFP on Friday.

US President Donald Trump said he has written to Iran pressing for talks on preventing the development of nuclear weapons, warning it faces possible military action if not.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Friday called on ethnic Serbs to quit the federal police force and courts and join the government of the deeply divided country's Serb statelet.

Sri Lanka signed a deal with Japan Friday to restructure $2.5 billion in loans, marking the first agreement with bilateral creditors who had pledged debt relief to the cash-strapped nation last year.

Pope Francis marked three weeks battling double pneumonia in hospital on Friday, reported by the Vatican to be "stable" but sounding weak and breathless in his first audio message.

On a lush green hilltop on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, Carmela Keren Yakuti proudly shows off her home in Dovev, which she fled more than 16 months ago over fears of a Hezbollah attack.

A South Korean court cancelled the arrest warrant of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday, but he remains behind bars with the prosecution likely to appeal.

Four years after the death of Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, seven healthcare professionals will go on trial next week accused of negligence during his final days.

China's foreign minister on Friday vowed Beijing would "firmly counter" US pressure, after Donald Trump heaped tariffs on Chinese goods and torched off a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed doubts over his commitment to the NATO alliance, saying countries that are not spending adequately on their militaries do not deserve defense.

Four years after Argentina became the first big Latin American country to legalize abortion, women are finding it hard to access terminations due to President Javier Milei's "chainsaw" economics and anti-feminist diatribes, critics say.

Guyana on Thursday sought relief from the UN's highest court after Venezuela said it would hold elections in the oil-rich Essequibo border region that both neighbors lay claim to.

President Donald Trump boasts he has brought illegal border crossings into the United States to record lows, but experts say the reasons for the drop go beyond his hardline anti-immigration stance.

The daughter of convicted French rapist Dominique Pelicot said Thursday she had filed a complaint against her father accusing him of sexual abuse, after he was jailed for repeatedly sedating and raping her mother Gisele Pelicot along with dozens of strangers.

Albanian authorities said Thursday they were moving to shut down TikTok in the coming days, following through on a ban announced in December.

Prosecutors on Thursday requested that the trial of Spain's ex-football federation chief Luis Rubiales for his forced kiss on Jenni Hermoso be annulled and re-run, notably questioning the judge's impartiality.

The US trade deficit surged to a new record in January, government data showed Thursday, as imports spiked while tariff worries flared in the month of President Donald Trump's inauguration.

Ethnic Serb leader Milorad Dodik insisted Thursday that he was not a threat to Bosnia, a day after signing laws that banned the country's central police and judiciary from his statelet.

Hundreds of Chinese nationals freed from Myanmar online scam centres flew home through Thailand on Thursday, as the kingdom said it aimed to repatriate 1,500 such workers a week.

Pope Francis was "resting" Thursday after a peaceful night, the Vatican said as the 88-year-old nears three weeks in hospital with pneumonia.

For three years, the Kremlin saw the United States as its biggest enemy, accusing US President Joe Biden of prolonging the Ukraine conflict by supplying weapons to Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged "no pause" in pressure on Russia to halt its "terror" after a Russian missile strike on a hotel in his hometown killed four civilians.

China's economy is facing growing "uncertainty" in the international environment, as well as insufficient domestic demand, a top official said on Thursday, as Beijing vowed to boost spending and cut rates to lift flagging growth.

European Union leaders will hold emergency talks in Brussels on Thursday, gathering as the Trump administration upends traditional alliances and retracts wartime backing of Ukraine.

South Korea's Air Force said Thursday that one of its fighter jets had accidentally dropped eight bombs in the wrong place during a training exercise, resulting in civilian injuries.

Lithuania on Thursday quit an international convention banning cluster bombs, citing security concerns over neighbouring Russia in a move that has drawn criticism from human rights groups.

A prominent Iranian pop singer who made a song urging women to remove their headscarves said Wednesday that he was willing to pay "a price for freedom" after being flogged 74 times by the authorities as part of his sentence.

For decades, Mexico's industrial borderlands boomed thanks to growing trade with the world's largest economy next door.

The extent of the pause remains unclear, but it follows a breakdown in relations between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.