World

Japan's plummeting birth rate has led a diaper manufacturer to stop making them for babies at home and instead ramp up production for adults, the company said Tuesday.

Oji Holdings will wrap up domestic output of infant diapers in September, after production dropped from a 2001 peak of around 700 million annually to 400 million today.

Togolese lawmakers adopted a new constitution on Monday, moving the country from a presidential to a parliamentary system and giving parliament the power to elect the president of the small West African country.

The president will be chosen "without debate" by lawmakers "for a single six-year term", and not by the public, according to the new text.

An EU law banning deforestation-derived products comes into effect at the end of 2024, but for Brazilian Indigenous people it contains an unbearable loophole: the Cerrado, Brazil's vast wooded savanna, is excluded from its scope.

An Indigenous delegation taking up the issue during a visit to Brussels said that the oversight -- for a region that supplies Europe with soy -- is "a question of survival" for them.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said France has information that Islamic State (IS) carried out Friday's attack in a Moscow concert hall, warning Russia against exploiting the attack by blaming it on Ukraine.

France has intelligence that "it was an entity of Islamic State that planned the attack and carried it out," Macron told reporters after arriving on a trip to the French South American region of French Guiana.

When Yasushi Sasaki moved from Japan to Belgium at the age of 19, he spoke not a word of French and had no clue what he would do with his life.

Last month, at the age of 52, he was named Brussels' chocolatier of the year by the prestigious Gault&Millau food guide -- no small triumph in a country that considers itself the homeland of chocolate.

Austrian consultant Michael Woditschka well remembers the fateful day when he was summoned by police over his relationship with a teenage boy and subsequently convicted in court.

The 44-year-old is one of about 11,000 gay people who until two decades ago faced prosecution in Austria but are, since February, now eligible for financial compensation.

Tens of thousands of Argentines took to the streets Sunday to mark the anniversary of the 1976 coup that brought an era of military dictatorship, whose bloody death toll has been disputed by the country's controversial new president, Javier Milei.

Central Buenos Aires was paralyzed for hours as massive crowds gathered for one of the largest March 24 "Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice" protests in recent years, AFP journalists saw.

The revelation that Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, has cancer prompted a swift backlash over a torrent of lurid social media speculation around her health, including by those positing she was secretly dead. But the somber news has not stopped the seemingly endless churn of conspiracy theories.

Kate Middleton, 42, received an outpouring of global sympathy after her video message on Friday revealed she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy, seeking to put an end to a maelstrom of unfounded claims circulated amid her monthslong absence from public life.

They may get a bad rap in the media, but the working-class suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis that will host some major events at the Paris Olympics hide some hidden treasures.

From the last resting place of the kings and queens of France to one of the country's coolest restaurants -- and some of its best kebabs -- the diverse department will be a hive of activity during the Games from July 26 to August 11.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's powerful sister said Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested a summit with her brother, adding a meeting was unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.

Relations between the two countries are historically strained, including by a long-running kidnapping dispute and North Korea's banned weapons programs, but Kishida has recently expressed a desire to improve ties, which Pyongyang has hinted it is not opposed to.

Tucked in the massive funding bill signed Saturday by President Joe Biden is a provision banning the flying of LGBTQ Pride flags over U.S. embassies, but the White House has vowed to work toward its repeal.

The prohibition was one of many side issues included in the mammoth $1.2 trillion package to fund the government through September, which passed early Saturday shortly after a midnight deadline.

Russia has ordered four men accused of killing at least 137 people in a massacre at a Moscow concert hall to be held in custody on "terror" charges with the death toll expected to climb as more than 100 people are hospitalised.

The men face life in prison, although Russian officials have clamored for the lifting of a moratorium on the death penalty to deliver even harsher sentences.