WORLD

A global treaty to curb plastic pollution will be secured at a summit in South Korea next month, the chair of the talks pledged Wednesday, although he cautioned there were still complex disputes and the time frame was a "big challenge".

The proportion of women killed in conflict in 2023 doubled compared to the previous year, according to a UN report that denounced "oppressive patriarchal" structures and called out an increase in sexual violence in war zones.

Georgia's ruling party held its final campaign rally on Wednesday ahead of crucial elections pitting it against a pro-Western opposition union which accuses the government of increasing authoritarianism.

As temperatures fall in Gaza, displaced Palestinians living in makeshift shelters with little food or warm clothes fear the approaching winter, the second since the war began.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday pledged that membership expansion would be high on the Brussels agenda, as she arrived in Albania at the start of a tour of six Balkan nations hoping to join the bloc.

Israeli strikes on Wednesday pounded Lebanon's Tyre, an ancient coastal city which boasts a UNESCO World Heritage site, leaving swathes of its centre in ruins.

Belarus will hold a presidential election on January 26, four and a half years after widespread allegations of vote rigging in the last ballot led to nationwide mass protests.

Four people were killed and 14 others wounded in an attack on the headquarters of a top Turkish defence firm near Ankara, Turkish officials said Wednesday.

The victim was a Sikh woman who had moved to Canada a few years ago.

The Chinese government should use its tax-and-spend policies to help boost flagging economic growth, a senior IMF official told AFP ahead of key meetings this week in Washington.

Sri Lanka deployed troops and increased police patrols around a Jewish community centre in a popular surfing town on Wednesday after the US embassy warned its citizens of a possible attack there.

Gisele Pelicot, whose ex-husband and dozens of other men are on trial in France accused of raping her, said Wednesday she was "broken" by her ordeal, but also "determined" to help other women.

Two survivors of a deadly 2017 suicide attack on an Ariana Grande concert in northern England in 2017 won a harassment claim on Wednesday against a former television producer who claims the attack was a hoax.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday sought to make headway with Saudi Arabia on normalisation with Israel, hoping a potentially historic deal will offer incentives to end the war in Gaza.

A Greenland court will decide Wednesday whether to keep US-Canadian anti-whaling activist Paul Watson in custody pending a decision on his extradition to Japan, where he is wanted over an altercation with whalers.

The meeting in the city of Kazan is the largest diplomatic forum in Russia since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022, triggering a barrage of Western sanctions and international condemnation.

The World Health Organization said it was forced to postpone the last phase of the polio vaccination drive in Gaza on Wednesday due to "intense bombardment" and "escalating violence" in the north.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres arrived in Russia on Wednesday to attend the BRICS summit, his first visit to the country for more than two years that has drawn scorn from Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday "now is the time" to end the conflict in Gaza, and urged Israel to avoid further escalation with Iran.

On Najmeddine Tantoun's farm on the outskirts of the western Libyan city of Misrata, the usual whir of hundreds of dairy milking machines has given way to near silence.

King Charles arrives in Samoa on Wednesday ahead of a Commonwealth summit, hoping to breathe new life into a bloc seen by critics as "a leftover of empire".

A Chinese aircraft carrier group sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, Taiwan's defence minister said, a day after Beijing held a live-fire exercise near the self-ruled island.

Asian equities diverged Wednesday after another unremarkable day on Wall Street, where rising bond yields and comments from Federal Reserve officials dampened expectations for US interest rate cuts.

A judge instructed Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, to turn over valuables and his luxury Manhattan apartment on Tuesday to two election workers he was found to have defamed.

King Charles III wrapped up a six-day Australia tour Wednesday, jetting off to the Pacific island of Samoa for a summit of the 56-nation Commonwealth, where more questions about Britain's colonial legacy await.

Hashem Safieddine was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters earlier this month.

Shirel Golan's brother blamed the Israeli government for not treating her for PTSD, saying, 'They are 100% accountable for my sister's death.'

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared to take aim at former president Donald Trump's economic approach Tuesday, saying the current US administration has "rejected isolationism that made America and the world worse off."

'At this stage, efforts are made to track and intercept the target,' the Israel Defense Forces said on social media.