World

France's conservative Les Républicains party was on course to extend its historic domination of the upper house of parliament following Senate elections on Sunday that marked another electoral setback for the ruling party of President Emmanuel Macron.

Unlike the lower house National Assembly, the Senate is not elected by direct universal suffrage but by around 150,000 voters known as "grands electeurs" who include elected regional and national officials.

The 61-year-old had colon cancer, for which he had sought treatment while on the run -- a decision that brought him to the attention of the authorities, who arrested him at a clinic in Palermo.

Messina Denaro was one of the most ruthless bosses in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.

She probably ought to have been in primary school, but instead Mazel Paris Alegado -- aged nine -- competed in skateboarding at the Asian Games on Monday.

Alegado, thought to be the youngest athlete at the Games in Hangzhou and representing the Philippines, qualified for the "women's" park final and came seventh out of eight.

At 32, Venezuelan Victor Manuel Atencio had finally had it: The crisis roiling his country, he felt, had ruined all his hopes for the future.

So he made the difficult decision to emigrate to the United States -- a grueling odyssey that ended up taking two months and covering some 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) marked both by calamity and kindness.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has admitted she had hoped to do "better" on controlling irregular migration, which has surged since her far-right party won historic elections a year ago.

"Clearly we hoped for better on immigration, where we worked so hard," she said in an interview marking the win, broadcast late Saturday on the TG1 channel.

Joerg Prophet flashed a brilliant white grin as he greeted voters at his campaign stand in Nordhausen, a small but prosperous city in the former East German state of Thuringia.

The mayoral candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has plenty to smile about. He is the clear favorite to win Sunday's run-off vote to lead the city of 40,000 people.

Olympic Council of Asia chief Raja Randhir Singh on Sunday defended the organisation's decision to allow North Korea to fly its flag at the Asian Games despite being banned from doing so over doping violations.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) declared the country's national anti-doping body "non-compliant" in 2021 and slapped it with sanctions.

Western powers through their support to Ukraine have effectively entered direct fighting against Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

"You can call it anything you want, but they are fighting with us, they are straight-up fighting with us. We call it a hybrid war, but that doesn't change things," Lavrov told a news conference at the United Nations.

Hundreds of protesters rallied in Sydney on Saturday against a plan to adapt Australia's constitution to enshrine Indigenous rights, ahead of a referendum next month.

The crowd gathered in the city's Hyde Park railed against the proposal, which if it passes on October 14, would give Indigenous peoples the right to be consulted on policies that affect them, a measure dubbed the Voice.

Lachlan Murdoch, the heir of the sprawling media empire whose politics skew as conservative as his father Rupert's, is set to take over the family business in November, the choice of continuity.

Lachlan is already president of Fox Corporation, parent company of the Fox News cable television channel, and was long the favorite against his brother James to succeed the family patriarch.

A fire at a golf ball factory in Taiwan killed at least six people, three of them firefighters who died in an explosion, authorities said Saturday.

The fire, which began Friday evening and raged all night, injured more than 100 people, most of them workers, the Pingtung county government told local media.

Pope Francis on Saturday hammered home his message that European governments must do more to care for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, saying "those who risk their lives at sea do not invade, they look for welcome".

Closing a meeting of bishops and young people from around the Mediterranean in French port city Marseille, he added that migration is "a reality of our times, a process that involves three continents around the Mediterranean and that must be governed with wise foresight, including a European response".