France has ordered the closure of a mosque in the north of the country because of the radical nature of its imam's preaching, regional authorities told AFP on Tuesday.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has rejected accusations that Moscow is limiting gas deliveries to Europe and denounced Germany’s resale of gas to Poland amid soaring prices.

The world’s economic output will exceed $100 trillion for the first  time next year and it will take China a little longer than previously  thought to overtake the United States as the No1 economy, a report  showed on Sunday.

British police have arrested a man suspected of breaking into the grounds of Windsor Castle, where Queen Elizabeth II was spending Christmas, with what was reported to be a crossbow.

Pope Francis yesterday called for dialogue to counter the isolation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic as billions around the world marked a second Christmas under the shadow of the coronavirus.

Greek coast guards scoured for survivors in the Aegean Sea yesterday after the latest in a series of migrant boat accidents that have killed at least 30 people in just days.

Russia has blocked the website of a rights monitor tracking political persecution, saying it promoted terrorism and extremism, amid an unprecedented official crackdown on dissent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is bent on destroying Ukraine but there is no major risk of an imminent invasion, a senior Ukrainian security official said on Friday.

Pope Francis yesterday urged dialogue on both personal and political levels as he celebrated a second Christmas under the shadow of a coronavirus pandemic that was pushing people into isolation.

The US and four European powers on Friday urged war-torn Libya to quickly set a new date for delayed presidential elections.

At least 16 people died when their boat overturned off the Greek island of Paros in the central Aegean Sea on Friday, in the third maritime disaster involving migrants this week, the country's coastguard said.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday said that Washington grew “arrogant and self-confident” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the expansion of the Nato military alliance.

The head of Poland’s ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski yesterday said that Germany was trying to turn the European Union into a federal “German Fourth Reich”.

A Moscow court slapped Google with an unprecedented hefty fine of nearly $100 million yesterday as Russia ramps up its pressure on foreign tech giants.

Two patients died yesterday after a fire broke out in an intensive care unit of an infectious diseases hospital, typically used to treat Covid patients, in Astrakhan in southern Russia.

More than a dozen Western powers on Thursday expressed anger that Russian mercenaries working for the controversial Wagner group have started to deploy in Mali, accusing Moscow of providing material backing for the fighters.

President Vladimir Putin yesterday said the Russian military successfully fired a simultaneous salvo of its Zircon hypersonic missiles, calling it “a big event” for the country.

Lawyers for Julian Assange have launched an appeal before Britain’s Supreme Court against a High Court ruling that he may be extradited to the United States, the WikiLeaks founder’s fiancee said Thursday.

Germany’s new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has pledged to work with international partners to help avert in Afghanistan what she called “the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our time”.

President Vladimir Putin said that Washington’s willingness to discuss Russia’s security proposals to curb Nato’s eastward expansion was “positive”, as fears mount in the West over a major military escalation in Ukraine.