Jailed Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski went on trial in Minsk yesterday in what supporters see as a bid to clamp down on Viasna, Belarus’s top rights group which he founded. Bialiatski, who was co-awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, founded Viasna

Iran yesterday announced the closure of a Tehran-based French Institute for Research in protest against cartoons of the Islamic republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The magazine printed

Germany will send a high-ranking parliamentary delegation to Taiwan next week, an MP told AFP yesterday, followed by the first ministerial visit in two decades in moves certain to spark tensions with China. Deputies from the pro-business Free Democratic

Britain’s Prince Harry said his troubled relationship with the royal family “never needed to be this way” and he wants to get his father King Charles and his brother “back”, in an excerpt from an interview with broadcaster ITV released on Monday.

Electric vehicles accounted for almost four out of every five new car registrations in Norway last year, setting a new record, according to figures released Monday.

Younis al-Shaer left Gaza dreaming of a better life in Europe, only to return to the Palestinian enclave in a coffin.

Russian gas exports to countries outside a group of former Soviet republics plunged by 45.5 percent in 2022, figures from gas giant Gazprom showed yesterday.

A ban on foreigners buying residential property in Canada took effect on Sunday, aiming to make more homes available to locals facing a housing crunch.

Gunmen attacked a prison in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez on Sunday, leaving 14 people dead and allowing 24 inmates to escape, the Chihuahua state prosecutors’ office said.

Croatia on Sunday switched to the euro and entered Europe's passport-free zone -- two major milestones for the country after joining the EU nearly a decade ago.

Former pope Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95, the Vatican announced yesterday, almost a decade after he became the first pontiff to resign in six centuries.

The bodies of 13 Moroccans were recovered after their boat sank off the country's southern coast while attempting to reach Spain's Canary Islands, Moroccan media reported.

Former Pope Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pontiff in 600 years to resign, died on Saturday aged 95 in a secluded monastery in the Vatican where he had lived since stepping down, a spokesman for the Holy See said.

Nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed worldwide over the past 20 years, an average of more than 80 a year, according to an analysis published by Reporters Without Borders.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin yesterday told Chinese President Xi Jinping he was keen to ramp up military cooperation and hailed the two countries’ efforts to counter Western influence.

US President Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will not be receiving New Year’s greetings from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said yesterday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks by video link with Chinese leader Xi Jinping today, the Kremlin said, as Russia seeks to bolster

Germany on Wednesday shrugged off Russia's ban on oil sales to countries and companies that comply with a price cap agreed by Western allies, saying it has "no practical significance".

Russian forces shelled and bombed towns and cities in eastern and southern Ukraine yesterday, a day after Russia’s foreign minister said Kyiv must accept Moscow’s demands for ending the war or else suffer defeat on the battlefield.

Protesting Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo erected new barricades on Tuesday, hours after Serbia said it had put its army on the highest combat alert following weeks of escalating tensions between Belgrade and Pristina.