WORLD

Despite the military intervention in Ukraine and efforts by the West to paint Russia as a pariah state, Moscow can still count on support from several African, Latin American and Asian governments, including that of heavyweight China.

In recent weeks, Syria has experienced a surge in tensions between the Russian and US military forces.

The fight against deadly wildfires raging in Greece for more than a week is improving, the fire service said on Friday, warning it remained on alert as fierce winds were forecast that could rekindle blazes.

Latin America received an uptick in attention in India when Foreign Minister S Jaishankar visited Guyana, Panama, Colombia and Dominican Republic earlier this year. This also marked a diplomatic shift because high-level visits from India to Latin America were rare.

Doksuri has left the Philippines, but its impacts can still be felt in regions where power has yet to be restored, agricultural crops were wiped out, homes were totally damaged and landslides resulted in deaths.

The strong winds wreaked havoc on power lines, sparked fires and uprooted trees. It also led to the closure of factories and shopping malls in the affected area.

Flanked by visiting Russian and Chinese officials, Kim Jong Un oversaw a North Korean military parade featuring new attack drones and Pyongyang's nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, state media reported Friday.

Nearly all the workers lost their houses, the accountant and vet disappeared along with their families, but after the deadly earthquake that devastated Turkey's Hatay province, "the silk of peace" is helping make new connections.

Singapore on Friday hanged a 45-year-old citizen for drug trafficking, the city-state's first execution of a woman in nearly 20 years, officials said.

Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was ousted in a 2021 military coup, has been moved from prison to a government building, an official from her party said Friday.

Equities fell Friday following a sell-off on Wall Street where forecast-beating data revived concerns the Federal Reserve could hike interest rates further, while speculation swirled that the Bank of Japan could be preparing to shift from its era of easy money.

Japan said Friday that North Korea posed a more serious threat to its national security than "ever before", as nuclear-armed Pyongyang rattles its neighbours with repeated missile tests and belligerent rhetoric.

A fired Twitter product manager said Elon Musk ran the company newly renamed X by instinct not data, surrounded by sycophants with his mood changing unpredictably.

A small passenger boat capsized in a lake near the Philippine capital on Thursday, killing 23 people on board and leaving six missing, rescuers said.

The Ukrainian crew of the Gepard is rather proud of the four Russian drones and two missiles daubed in white on the armoured chassis of their German-made anti-aircraft tank.

The United Nations said Thursday it was deeply concerned for the safety of hundreds of migrants stranded in Tunisia following their removal to remote parts of the North African country.

Authorities were racing Thursday to prevent a possible ecological disaster off the Dutch coast where a blaze raged aboard a car carrier ship for a second day.

The US economy defied expectations to see growth pick up in the second quarter, according to government data released Thursday, supported by business investment and resilient consumer spending.

China said Thursday it opposed "malicious hype" concerning this week's removal of foreign minister Qin Gang, as it continued to avoid questions about the senior diplomat's disappearance.

Currently, the Indian economy sits in the fifth position in the world, behind the U.S., China, Japan and Germany.

Almost 800 irregular migrants drowned off Tunisia in the first half of this year as they tried to reach Europe by boat, a National Guard spokesman told AFP Thursday. "789 bodies of migrants were recovered from the sea, including 102 Tunisians, the others foreigners and unidentified people," said Houcem Eddine Jebabli, adding that more than 34,000 were rescued.

The U.S. prosecutors surprisingly announced Wednesday that they were dropping the lawsuit against Bankman-Fried, citing the country's treaty obligations to The Bahamas, the country to which Bankman-Fried was extradited in December 2022.

"Unless the manpower in R&D sector is raised by at least 10 times, it cannot compete with China in the same sector. It has to raise by a factor of 40-50 to complete with USA. So that's a big vacuum,"

Thousands of Shiite Muslims marched through Indian-administered Kashmir's largest city Thursday for a major religious procession permitted in the restive territory for the first time since a ban was imposed decades ago.

Lindsey Horan denied the Netherlands a famous victory against the United States on Thursday in a 1-1 draw while co-hosts Australia were primed to face Nigeria and seal a place in the last 16.

On the road linking Niger's capital Niamey with the south of the country, illegal fuel warehouses have closed and intrepid black-market touts waving petrol canisters at passing cars have become an endangered species.

Forty years ago, mobs in Sri Lanka burned 13 people alive, part of a week-long pogrom that turbocharged simmering ethnic unrest into all-out civil war.

The Russian president will on Thursday host leaders of African countries for a summit in his native Saint Petersburg, as the continent braces for the consequences of Moscow's withdrawal from the Ukraine grain export deal.

Seventeen Ecuador corrections officials held hostage by prison inmates were freed Wednesday, authorities said, as they struggled to compile a death toll from the dismembered body parts left over from days of fighting between rival gangs.