The tobacco industry is a far greater threat than many realise as it is one of the world’s biggest polluters, from leaving mountains of waste to driving global warming, the WHO said yesterday.

Israel signed a free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates yesterday, its first with an Arab country, building on their US-brokered normalisation of diplomatic relations in 2020.

A Ukrainian court sentenced two captured Russian soldiers to 11 and a half years in jail on Tuesday for shelling a town in eastern Ukraine, the second war crimes verdict since the start of Russia's invasion in February.

Millions of people face severe hunger in the Horn of Africa as the worst drought in more than 40 years could extend to a fifth consecutive failed rainy season, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies warned on Tuesday.

Russia widened its gas cuts to Europe on Tuesday with Gazprom (GAZP.MM) turning off supply to top Dutch trader GasTerra escalating the economic battle between Moscow and Brussels and pushing up European gas prices.

In underground vaults near Ukraine's battlefields, the genetic code for nearly 2,000 crops is in danger of being permanently destroyed.

The grieving Texas town of Uvalde begins laying to rest the 21 school children and teachers who were killed in a mass shooting at an elementary school a week ago, with two funerals scheduled Tuesday for two 10-year-old girls.

Hungarian police said Monday they busted an international money-laundering ring based in Hungary led by an Israeli man that cheated people in dozens of countries through online investment frauds.

Ukraine's destruction of Russian artillery systems and armoured vehicles with Turkish Bayraktar TB2 aerial drones has made “the whole world” a customer, according to its designer.

Canada's government introduced legislation Monday to implement a "national freeze" on the sale and purchase of handguns as part of a gun control package that would also limit magazine capacities and ban some toys that look like guns.

A 32-year-old French journalist was killed Monday in eastern Ukraine, fatally hit by shell shrapnel while covering a Ukrainian evacuation operation, according to the French news broadcaster that he worked for.

A 103-year-old Swedish woman on Sunday set the world record for the oldest person to complete a tandem parachute jump, saying she planned to celebrate “with a little cake”.

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards yesterday accused “Zionists” of assassinating a colonel in Tehran earlier this month, the Guards’ official website reported.

Around 100 people have died in clashes between gold miners in northern Chad, Defence Minister General Daoud Yaya Brahim said yesterday.

The World Health Organization does not believe the monkeypox outbreak outside Africa will lead to a pandemic, an official said yesterday, adding it remains unclear if infected people who are not displaying symptoms can transmit the disease.

Russia appears to have suffered devastating losses amongst mid- and junior-ranking officers in its conflict with Ukraine, raising the prospect of weaker military effectiveness in future, Britain’s defence ministry said yesterday.

US President Joe Biden said yesterday he would not send rocket systems to Ukraine that could hit targets well inside Russian territory, despite urgent requests from Kyiv for long-range weapons.

Ukrainian forces endured heavy artillery barrages yesterday as they held off Russian attempts to capture Severodonetsk, the largest city Kyiv still controls in the Luhansk region of the Donbas, Ukrainian officials said.

Turkey will not wait for US “permission” to launch a new offensive in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks published yesterday, defying a warning from Washington.

More than 30 people were killed in southern Nigeria yesterday after a stampede erupted during a crowded church charity event where food was being distributed.