PEOPLE

French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah has returned to France, her university said Wednesday, after being held for four-and-a-half years in Iran in a case that added to tensions between Paris and Tehran.

Yaakov Weissmann survived the horrors of the Holocaust by hiding with a non-Jewish family in France when he was just four years old during World War II. Now 83, he survived the October 7 attack in Israel by Hamas gunmen that has drawn comparisons to Nazi atrocities for its brutality.

Ecuador's 35-year-old president-elect, banana empire heir Daniel Noboa, joins a growing group of world leaders who were elected to the top job before they turned 40.

Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who died Monday aged 86, was a mediator who brokered peace around the globe, winning a Nobel Peace Prize for a formidable career spanning over 40 years.

At the age of 35, Ecuador's president-elect Daniel Noboa is fulfilling the political dreams of his banana tycoon father, who failed five times to win the presidency.

Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg on Thursday joined indigenous Sami activists protesting in Oslo against wind turbines still operating on reindeer herding land two years after a court ruled them illegal.

The Council of Europe on Monday awarded its top rights prize to jailed Turkish philanthropist Osman Kavala, who has come under repeated attack from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Forty years ago, Myanmar barmaid Dar San Ye stood in a river running through Yangon, squaring up to a North Korean agent gripping a live grenade.

South Korean writer Eun Seo-ran was happily single, until a medical emergency made her want family around to help.

Talk about bouncing back.

Ten years after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rose to power in Egypt promising prosperity for all, he embarks on a third run for office as Egyptians buckle under unrelenting economic strain.

Congolese surgical gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, who won the Nobel prize for his work with rape victims, is renowned at home for his boundless energy and biting criticism of the central African country's government.

The frontrunner in Saturday's Maldives presidential vote is an ardent advocate of Chinese investment and has promised to steer the luxury tourism hotspot back towards Beijing's orbit if he wins.

Several shows are recognising Guenter Brus, the last surviving key member of Vienna's famed "actionists", who turned 85 this week and whose radical movement broke new ground using the body to make art.

Berlin said Wednesday German maestro Christian Thielemann would succeed world-renowned conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim as general musical director of its State Opera following his resignation due to ill health.

Every little detail counts in an isicathamiya competition: the harmony, the choreography, the costumes, the entrance on stage, the exit and, of course, the singing.

Rupert Murdoch transformed media and politics on three continents, building a chain of newspapers he inherited from his father at just 21 into a lucrative and profoundly influential right-leaning empire.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan swept to power promising change, but a humiliating military defeat to Azerbaijan and a dramatic escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh tarnished his reputation in the poor ex-Soviet country.

She already rules music, so now it's on to Tinseltown: Taylor Swift's concert documentary is poised to dominate the fall movie season, challenging the hegemony of film studios and consecrating her business empire.

Driven by a passion to protect the planet, Phoebe English hasn't bought a centimetre of fabric or a single plastic button for her collection at London Fashion Week.

Felicity Hayward will not miss a single show at London Fashion Week, which starts on Friday, watching each model and counting the number of plus-size women on the catwalks.

A Dutch art detective has recovered a precious Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from a museum in a daring midnight heist during the coronavirus lockdown three-and-a-half years ago, police said Tuesday.

British fashion house Alexander McQueen is losing its artistic director Sarah Burton who has been in charge for more than 20 years, parent company Kering announced on Monday.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the once-feared Zulu nationalist and historic leader of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) which presided over South Africa's deadliest violence ahead of the first all-race elections, died Saturday aged 95, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced.

American actor Sylvester Stallone travelled to the Vatican on Friday for a brief private audience with Pope Francis.

Augusto Pinochet used military force to overthrow a popularly elected president and rule Chile with an iron grip that saw thousands of his subjects tortured and killed.

General Brice Oligui Nguema, who was sworn in as Gabon's new interim president on Monday, was unknown to much of the public before he led a coup last week that ended 55 years of rule by the Bongo dynasty.

American singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, best known for his 1977 hit "Margaritaville," has died at age 76, according to a statement on his website.

A towering figure of 20th-century classical music, Leonard Bernstein is the subject of Bradley Cooper's much-anticipated biopic "Maestro", premiering at Venice.