World

A six-decade archive charting pop icon David Bowie's career will open in London in 2025, providing a "new source book for the Bowies of tomorrow", a museum director said Wednesday.

Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum Tristram Hunt said the "incredible" collection had more than 80,000 items of Bowie memorabilia.

Meta on Thursday said that tens of millions of people in Iran are using Instagram despite government efforts to block the service due to months-long protests.

Iran has been rocked by citizen outrage since the September 16 death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest for an alleged breach of dress rules for women.

The U.S. is planning to more than quadruple the number of troops in Taiwan as part of an effort to harden the island against a potential invasion by China, reported the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

"The U.S. plans to deploy between 100 and 200 troops to the island in the coming months, up from roughly 30 there a year ago, according to U.S. officials. The larger force will expand a training program the Pentagon has taken pains not to publicize as the U.S. works to provide Taipei with the capabilities it needs to defend itself without provoking Beijing," reported Nancy A. Youssef. "The number of American troops, which has included special-operations forces and U.S. Marines, has fluctuated by a handful during the past few years, according to Defense Department data. The planned increase would be the largest deployment of forces in decades by the U.S. on Taiwan, as the two draw closer to counter China’s growing military power."

From a young age, Elena Martinez and other female residents of Aserradores, a small fishing community in eastern Nicaragua, learn to navigate the dense mangrove forest to extract a black mollusc from deep under the mud.

Every few days, they leave home at dawn to row about two kilometers (1.2 miles) in a fishing boat to the mangroves, where they crawl through gnarly branches knee-deep in mud, digging for the delicacy by hand.

A woman dies every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth complications, despite maternal mortality rates dropping by a third in 20 years, the United Nations said Thursday.

Rates fell significantly between 2000 and 2015 but largely stagnated between 2016 and 2020 -- and in some regions have even reversed, the UN said.

A cave in southern France has revealed evidence of the first use of bows and arrows in Europe by modern humans some 54,000 years ago, far earlier than previously known.

The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, pushes back the age of archery in Europe by more than 40,000 years.

Spain will host the next Latin Grammy Awards ceremony, marking the first time the star-studded event is held outside the United States, officials said Wednesday.

Like the Grammy Awards, which are considered the top US music honors, the Latin Grammys celebrate excellence in music and performances by Latin artists.

David Hockney's first immersive show opened to the public in London on Wednesday offering a hypnotic, multi-sensory journey through the artist's decades-long career, from sun-drenched California swimming pools to the Normandy countryside.

"The world is a very very beautiful if you look at it. Most people don't look," says Hockney in his commentary which runs through the show, along with archive recordings.

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday Russia was fighting for its "historical" lands in Ukraine, at a state-organized patriotic rally in Moscow in support of the Ukraine offensive.

"I just heard from the top military leadership of the country that a battle is ongoing right now, for our historical lands, for our people," Putin said.