World

Britain's Conservatives are expected to lose the July 4 general election in large part because of economic turmoil from Brexit, high taxation and a budget that exacerbated a cost-of-living crisis.

The fallout has overshadowed widespread praise for the Tories' huge financial support provided to millions of Britons during the Covid pandemic.

Having gained worldwide renown for his Barack Obama campaign poster, it was a shock for Shepard Fairey, better known by his tag Obey, to discover his work being used by the far right in France.

"It's so ridiculous it's hard for me to even believe," Fairey told AFP in Paris, where an exhibition of his work is running at the Itinerrance Gallery until July 15.

An army of artisans is racing to complete thousands of costumes for the Paris Olympics ceremonies that the designers say will each be a unique combination of history, sport and flamboyance.

At a workshop in Seine-Saint-Denis on the outskirts of the French capital, some 20 costume designers and milliners were hunched over their creations during a recent visit by AFP.

A city council in South Korea said Wednesday their first administrative officer robot was defunct after throwing itself down some stairs, with local media mourning the country's first robot suicide.

South Korea's Gumi City Council announced the robot was found unresponsive after having apparently fallen down a two-meter (six-and-a-half foot) staircase last week.

An online campaign has raised more than 34,000 euros for a homeless man in Amsterdam who turned in a wallet stuffed with 2,000 euros in cash to police.

The 33-year-old Hadjer Al-Ali said his life had been turned "completely upside down", according to the funding site, which raised 34,102 euros ($36,450) in just one day.

When 10 Hong Kong LGBTQ couples exchanged vows at a hotel ballroom, the scene could have been mistaken for any other mass wedding -- except the officiant was 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) away.

The Chinese city does not recognize same-sex marriage and the newlyweds had to legally register their marriages in the United States, with the officiant joining via video call from Utah.

Malaysian Olympic chiefs have hit back at flak over their athletes' kit for next month's Paris Games, telling critics: Do it yourself next time.

Unveiled over the weekend, the gold-themed outfits with tiger stripe designs were meant to reflect Malaysia's relentless pursuit for gold medals, according to sports officials.

The biggest auction of Diana memorabilia since the late British princess sold dozens of outfits months before her death gets underway in California this week, featuring a midnight blue tulle dress and a flamenco-style lace-up number.

Nearly fifty pieces, including gowns, shoes, handbags and hats, will go under the hammer in Beverly Hills.

After more than thirteen years in England, including five years spent in prison, Julian Assange pleaded guilty in the Northern Mariana Islands, a far-flung US territory in the Pacific, and walked out of court a free man.

The timing -- and location -- of the plea deal seemed to have come out of nowhere.

U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich's closed-door trial for espionage began in Russia on Wednesday, 15 months after his shock arrest on charges he, his employer and the White House reject as false.

The Wall Street Journal correspondent became the first Western journalist to be arrested for spying in Russia since the Cold War when he was detained in March 2023 on a reporting trip to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

NATO's 32 nations on Wednesday appointed outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte as the alliance's next head, handing him the job at a crucial moment with Russia on the march in Ukraine and US elections looming.

Rutte will take over from Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on October 1 after major powers -- spearheaded by the United States -- wrapped up his nomination ahead of a summit of NATO leaders in Washington next month.

Renowned economist Gabriel Zucman released a blueprint Tuesday showing the world's governments that a global minimum tax on billionaires would be both technically feasible and economically beneficial, leaving political will as the only major obstacle preventing transformative changes to an international tax structure long exploited by the ultra-rich.

Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading expert on tax evasion, estimated in the new analysis that a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires would raise between $200 billion and $250 billion annually in revenue from roughly 3,000 individuals globally, resources that "could be invested to support sustained economic development through investments in education, health, public infrastructure, the energy transition, and climate change mitigation."

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help former President Donald Trump, a chain of events documented in detail by former special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Now, eight years later, Vladimir Putin and his strategists are just as eager for the former president to retake office in order to realize their geopolitical goals.

According to Vanity Fair, "From the moment Trump was elected, the word Yalta became one of the most popular among Kremlin officials" — a reference to how Joseph Stalin was able to convince his then-American and British allies in World War II to legitimize his sphere of influence. "They were confident that Trump was the right person to agree to such a spectacle. This did not mean that Russian authorities considered Trump 'their puppet' — the Kremlin never had any means to influence him. Putin simply believed that Trump was morally close and understandable to him: a fellow cynic who also thought that money solved everything."