Indigenous groups urged world leaders yesterday to back a new target to protect 80% of the Amazon basin by 2025, saying bold action was needed to stop deforestation pushing the Earth’s largest rainforest beyond a point of no return.

The challenges to security emerging from the upheaval in Afghanistan should be a wake-up call for the European Union, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, urging the EU to be more ambitious on defence and on global leadership. 

New Zealand recorded its first Covid-related death in six months yesterday, but health authorities said there were signs the outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant was coming under control.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday vowed to tighten counter-terrorism laws this month after a knife-wielding militant known to the authorities stabbed and wounded seven people in a supermarket.

476 - Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed by Odoacer, a German barbarian who proclaims himself king of Italy.

The sooner the Taliban will enter the family of civilised people, so to speak, the easier it will be to contact, communicate, and somehow influence and ask questions.

New Zealand police on Friday shot and killed a knife-wielding "extremist" who was known to authorities, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, after he stabbed and wounded at least six people in a supermarket.

The European Union and other countries yesterday called for negotiations towards a legally-binding agreement to reduce plastic pollution, including the microplastics infesting oceans and waterways.

1783 - Treaty of Paris signed in Paris ends the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain and United States of America.

A Paris auction house will seek to sell in October the world’s biggest known example of the dinosaur triceratops, known as “Big John”, with the spectacular skeleton on show to the public beforehand, organisers said Tuesday.

Over half of all people in the world have no social protections, the United Nations said yesterday, even after the pandemic spurred countries to offer more services to their populations.

When the world’s leading conservation congress kicks off Friday in the French port city of Marseille it will aim to deliver one key message: protecting wildlife must not be seen as a noble gesture but an absolute necessity -- for people and the planet.

Russian cosmonauts have discovered new cracks in a segment of the International Space Station that could widen, a senior space official said yesterday, the latest in a series of setbacks.

Teachers and school staff should be among the groups prioritised for Covid-19 vaccinations so that schools in Europe and Central Asia can stay open, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef said yesterday.

Russia yesterday called on the United States to release Afghan central bank reserves that Washington blocked after the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul earlier this month.

1907 - The Anglo-Russian Convention was signed in St Petersburg, settling differences between Britain and Russia over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended Britain’s airlift from Kabul yesterday following growing criticism that ministers had been “asleep on watch”, potentially leaving thousands of eligible Afghans behind in the country.

France and Britain will submit a resolution to an emergency United Nations meeting due today proposing a safe zone in Kabul to try and protect people trying to leave Afghanistan, French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party appears to be ceding popularity to its Conservative rivals, according to polls published Saturday, with early elections only weeks away.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 doubles the risk of hospitalisation compared with the Alpha variant it has supplanted as the dominant strain worldwide, researchers reported in The Lancet on Saturday.