World

Kung-fu daredevil, Hollywood star and Guinness world-record holder, and now Hong Kong-born actor Jackie Chan is set to be a torchbearer in the lead-up to Wednesday's opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Paris.

The 70-year-old commands a huge following in France and beyond, his signature blend of comedy and martial arts transcending language barriers.

Goulash-flavoured gelato, anyone? Curious customers are flocking from all over Hungary to taste the summer's wackiest taste sensations -- a small ice cream parlor serving up savory Hungarian staples.

Robert Reinhardt and his taste-bud challenging flavors have become an overnight hit, creating a buzz on social media.

Leftist parties in France on Tuesday accused President Emmanuel Macron of election theft and announced mass protests after he rejected Nouveau Front Populaire's proposed candidate for prime minister, even though the left-wing coalition won the most seats in a snap parliamentary contest last month.

The left-wing parties that formed NFP in June to fight off the surging far-right expressed outrage at Macron's decision, with the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led La France Insoumise (LFI) Party condemning Macron's dismissal of a leftist government as a "coup" and urging a "firm response from French society."

H.R. McMaster — the three-star general who served as former President Donald Trump's national security adviser for a little more than a year — is shedding new light on how the 45th president of the United States was viewed by the rest of the world.

The New York Times is reporting that in his new book, At War With Ourselves, McMaster wrote that Trump was often outmaneuvered by world leaders who used flattery to take advantage of him. This was particularly true with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2018, McMaster described how he once saw Trump writing a complimentary letter to Putin to go with a copy of a New York Post article in which he called Trump a "good listener" while criticizing the American political system.

The Paris Paralympics begin on Wednesday with a spectacular opening ceremony in a city still on a high after the highly successful Olympics.

A new generation of Paralympians will join seasoned veterans competing in many of the same venues that hosted Olympic sports.

For many people, dancing the tango while on a visit to Buenos Aires is on the bucket list. The only problem: the steps are tricky to learn and venturing unversed onto a "milonga" dance floor can be a brutal experience.

Enter the Argentine capital's "taxi dancers" -- professionals who accompany novice dancers for a night out on the town.

The threat of a "megaquake", a series of typhoons, and a week-long national holiday have some Japanese scrambling to buy rice -- the nation's cherished staple food -- with the government warning Tuesday against panic buying.

"We could only procure half the usual amount of rice this summer and bags of rice get quickly sold out," a clerk at a branch of the popular Fresco supermarket chain told AFP in the Japanese capital.

A U.S. soldier who fled to North Korea last year will plead guilty to desertion at a court martial as part of a plea deal, his lawyer said.

Private Second Class Travis King ran across the border from South Korea into the North in July last year while on a sightseeing tour of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula.

Russia has criticized France over the detention of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who was arrested at a Paris airport on Saturday over accusations of failing to curb criminal activity on the platform. The Russian embassy said it had asked for access to Durov but received no response, saying "the French side is refusing to cooperate".

French judicial authorities on Sunday extended the detention of the Russian-born founder and chief of Telegram Pavel Durov after his arrest at a Paris airport over alleged offences related to the popular but controversial messaging app.

Whirring wind turbines in India's Thar desert supply critical green energy for the world's most populous nation, but those living in their shadows say it comes at their expense.

It illustrates the hard balance faced as India, the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, scrambles to boost its non-fossil fuel capacity to stem the rising impacts of climate change.

HMS Victory has survived the cannonballs of Napoleon's navy, being rammed by another warship, a World War II bomb, even UK navy plans to scrap her.

But nearly 260 years after it was launched, Victory -- emblem of British maritime heritage and scene of naval hero Horatio Nelson's death during the Battle of Trafalgar -- is facing another equally deadly threat: the deathwatch beetle.

Separatist militants killed at least 39 people in "coordinated" attacks in southwestern Pakistan on Monday that largely targeted ethnic Punjabis, government officials said.

In one of the attacks, dozens of militants stopped vehicles travelling on a highway through Balochistan province and shot 23 people dead -- one of the worst shootings in the region in the past several years.

A Thai court will sentence Thursday a famed Spanish actor's son charged with murdering and dismembering a Colombian plastic surgeon he met online.

The case against Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a 30-year-old chef and son of actor Rodolfo Sancho, has generated enormous interest in his home country, with scores of Spanish reporters flying in for the trial.