World

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday attacked a US proposal to hold a "Summit for Democracy," saying such a gathering would only deepen fissures on the international stage.

Speaking in a UN ministerial session organized by his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, the veteran Russian diplomat said that developing multilateralism should "be done on a collegial basis."

A Yemeni model arrested two months ago for "challenging social norms" is at risk of undergoing a forced "virginity test", Amnesty International said on Friday.

Entisar al-Hammadi was arrested in February in Sanaa, where the Iran-backed Huthi rebels who control the Yemeni capital are enforcing a morality campaign.

US Vice President Kamala Harris and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged Friday to cooperate on resolving the roots of the long-running and politically sensitive issue of illegal migration into the United States.

Harris, speaking with Lopez Obrador in a virtual meeting, said they should work together on helping El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras improve conditions and persuade many migrants to stay home.

It doesn't look like much from the outside, but a building in central Rome holds a hidden treasure in the basement: the remains of a Roman era home, including elaborate mosaics.

At the entrance of the 1950s building at the foot of Rome's Aventine Hill, all appears normal, with a resident loaded with shopping bags kindly holding the door.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the release Friday of four Hong Kong democracy activists who were jailed for taking part in a vigil for victims of Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

"The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong and rejects the sentencing of activists for attending a Tiananmen commemoration," Blinken wrote on Twitter.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives scored a stunning election victory in an opposition stronghold Friday, after Britain held its first major ballot box test since Brexit and the coronavirus crisis.

The "Super Thursday" regional and local elections could reshape the UK as pro-independence forces in Scotland, where voting for the devolved parliament was also held, bid to break away.

Indonesia's Mount Sinabung erupted on Friday, spewing a massive column of smoke and ash up to 2,800 metres into the sky.

The volcano in North Sumatra province started belching ash and volcanic material at 9 am and the eruption lasted almost six minutes, a local geological agency said.

President Joe Biden is nearing a foreign policy victory in the Middle East, according to a new report.

"The United States and Iran could each come back into compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal within weeks, a senior State Department official said on Thursday, on the eve of what could be a final round of negotiations before an agreement is brokered. Significant hurdles remain. But the comments were an optimistic signal by the Biden administration that an American return to the accord between Iran and world powers could be within reach," The New York Times reported Thursday.

The US military has deployed more heavy bombers and fighter jets to protect withdrawing American and coalition troops from Afghanistan, which have so far sustained no direct attacks, the Pentagon said Thursday.

"Less than one week in, the drawdown is going according to plan," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters.

The US military has no plans to shoot down an out -of-control Chinese rocket now hurtling towards Earth, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday.

"We have the capability to do a lot of things, but we don't have a plan to shoot it down as we speak," Austin told journalists.

President Joe Biden warned Thursday that Congress needs to adopt his multi-trillion dollar spending plans to renew the US economy because China is "eating our lunch."

Speaking in deep-Republican Louisiana, Biden pitched his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal as a way to secure US preeminence on the global stage as much as fixing dangerous bridges and roads.

Forget Google Maps -- sharks can read the Earth's magnetic field like a GPS navigator to find their way, a study in Current Biology showed Thursday.

Lead author Bryan Keller told AFP the paper vindicates a decades-old theory about how the aquatic predators are able to migrate vast distances, swim in arrow-straight lines, and return to their precise point of origin.