The International Labour Organization has elevated occupational health and safety to the status of a “fundamental right” for the world’s workers, a “historic” decision that will mean new obligations for member states.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin yesterday called out China for a series of coercive, aggressive and dangerous actions that threaten stability around Asia and vowed the United States would stand by partners to resist any pressure.

Rescuers have found the bodies of seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Italy, local authorities said on Saturday, two days after the aircraft disappeared from radar screens.

Russia and China opened a new cross-border bridge in the far east on Friday which they hope will further boost trade as Moscow reels from sweeping Western sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine.

Canada is poised to become the first country in the world to require that a warning be printed on every cigarette.

Russian President Vladimir Putin paid tribute on Thursday to Tsar Peter the Great on the 350th anniversary of his birth, drawing a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands.

Ukraine sought more help from the West on Friday, pleading for faster deliveries of weapons to hold off better-armed Russian forces and for humanitarian support to combat deadly diseases.

US President Joe Biden faced open criticism Thursday at an Americas summit, along with complaints about foreign pressure by Brazil’s far-right leader, as he sought progress on issues from migration to climate change.

Ukraine said yesterday it had launched new air strikes on Russian positions in the captured southern region of Kherson as President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted Kyiv’s forces were “holding on” in the east of the country.

The weather phenomenon La Nina, which has affected global temperatures and worsened drought and flooding, will likely continue for months, and possibly even into 2023, the UN warned yesterday.

A congressional panel investigating last year’s mob assault on the US Capitol laid out its case Thursday that Donald Trump and his claims of a stolen election were at the heart of what amounted to an “attempted coup” to remain in power.

Fifteen people were killed and 37 injured yesterday when a bus and a truck collided on a South African highway near the capital Pretoria, an emergency services spokesman told AFP.

Reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia risk leaving between 11 million and 19 million more people with chronic hunger over the next year, the United Nations’ food agency said yesterday.

The United Nations yesterday slammed cancellation of the operating licence of rights group Odhikar, urging the Bangladesh government to “immediately reconsider”.

The UN refugee agency yesterday accused Britain of dishonesty over London’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, as a court heard an emergency bid to block the first deportations next week.

The San Jose galleon was owned by the Spanish crown when it was sunk by the British navy near Cartagena in 1708. Experts believe it contains at least 200 tons of gold, silver and emeralds.

The Biden administration is lifting its requirement that international air travellers to the US take a Covid-19 test within a day before boarding their flights, easing one of the last remaining government mandates meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Latin American leaders rebuked US President Joe Biden face-to-face on Thursday over his exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from an Americas summit he is hosting, underscoring the challenges he faces to reassert leadership in the region.

An employee opened fire at a manufacturing business in rural western Maryland on Thursday, killing three coworkers before the suspect and a state trooper were wounded in a shootout, authorities said.

Two Britons and a Moroccan who were captured while fighting for Ukraine were sentenced to death on Thursday by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), one of Russia's proxies in eastern Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.