World

Taiwanese drag queen Nymphia Wind and winner of hit TV series "RuPaul's Drag Race" performed a rousing medley of songs for outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, thanking her for being the island's "mother".

During Tsai's two terms in power, her Democratic Progressive Party had been a strong proponent of social issues particularly on LGBTQ rights, making the island the first place in Asia to legalise gay marriage in 2019.

Indonesian rescuers raced Wednesday to find dozens of people still unaccounted for after heavy rains caused flash floods and washed volcanic debris into residential areas over the weekend, sweeping away houses and leaving 67 people dead.

Hours of torrential rain on Saturday caused mud and rocks to flow into districts near one of Indonesia's most active volcanos, destroying dozens of houses and damaging roads and mosques.

The European Union's top diplomat has said that the United States is showing "fatigue" in its Middle East diplomacy and called for greater EU efforts toward a Palestinian state.

On a visit to California, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell again strongly criticized Israel's war campaign, saying Gazans were "dying and starving and suffering in unimaginable proportions" and that it was a "man-made disaster."

Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author known as "Canada's Chekhov" for her mastery of the short story, has died at 92, Canadian media reported Tuesday.

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 and the International Booker Prize for her body of work in 2009, Munro had suffered from dementia in recent years. According to the Globe and Mail, she died late Monday at her care home in Ontario.

A deadly attack on a convoy of World Central Kitchen aid workers which killed 7 people last month was not a one-off occurrence, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday, but rather representative of a documented pattern in which Israel military forces have targeted relief personnel and infrastructure despite being informed of the exact locations of those operations.

"Even though aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities to ensure their protection," an analysis by HRW found that eight such attacks on such operations, including the April 1 bombing of the WCK in Deir al-Balah, have been carried out by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) over the last seven months.

Gunmen on Tuesday attacked a prison van at a motorway toll in northern France, killing at least two prison officers and freeing a convict who had been jailed last week.

President Emmanuel Macron vowed that everything would be done to find those behind the attack as hundreds of members of the security forces were deployed for a manhunt to find the attackers and the inmate who were all still at large.

A French court on Tuesday acquitted French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski of defaming British actor Charlotte Lewis after she accused him of raping her when she was a teenager.

Polanski, 90, was not in court for the verdict at the Paris criminal court.

Hollywood stars jetted into Cannes on Tuesday as the world's premier film festival got under way in dramatic circumstances, including a fugitive director's daring escape from Iran, and a looming cloud of fresh #MeToo allegations.

The 12-day festival officially kicks off in the evening with an honorary award for Meryl Streep -- just one of a host of international A-listers flocking to the sun-drenched Cote d'Azur, where legendary directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola top the VIP guest list.

A French climber died on Mount Makalu, the world's fifth-highest peak, expedition organizers said Tuesday, the second fatality of this year's spring climbing season and both on the same mountain.

Johnny Saliba, 60, died at an altitude of 8,120 metres (26,640 feet) during his summit push on Sunday.

Inside his Abu Dhabi gastro pub, Chad McGehee inspects shiny steel tanks fermenting a special brew: the first beer made in the conservative Arab Gulf, where alcohol has long been taboo.

The 42-year-old American is one of the founders of Craft pub in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the only licensed microbrewery in a region that is generally as dry as its desert climate.

Celebrities who have remained silent on the crisis in Gaza are feeling the wrath of angry fans wielding the "digital guillotine" to block them on social media and streaming platforms.

Taylor Swift, Drake and many more have become targets of the "Block Out 2024" movement, which began on TikTok in response to the perceived disconnect between the glamorous Met Gala and the grim realities of the Israel-Hamas conflict.