A pregnant New Zealand journalist says she turned to the Taliban for help and is now stranded in Afghanistan after her home country has prevented her from returning due to a bottleneck of people in its coronavirus quarantine system.

Britain is considering making a major NATO deployment as part of a plan to strengthen Europe's borders in response to Russia massing troops on the border with Ukraine, the government said on Saturday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday threatened Turkish media with legal action over content “incompatible with national and moral values,” in a move seen by critics as an attempt to stifle the dissent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his administration to consider an apparent new system to ban "toxic" internet content, although details were not released.

US President Joe Biden on Friday sought to maintain pressure on Russian leader Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, announcing a small troop deployment to eastern Europe even as top Pentagon officials backed a renewed push for diplomacy.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will step up diplomatic efforts over the Ukraine crisis with a visit to the region next week and a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to avoid bloodshed.

Western leaders stepped up preparations for any Russian military action in Ukraine on Tuesday, with talks taking place on protecting energy supplies and President Joe Biden saying he would consider imposing direct sanctions on President Vladimir Putin.

School dropouts are also a problem: in South Africa, between 400,000 and 500,000 students “reportedly dropped out of school altogether between March 2020 and July 2021.”

Tensions between Moscow and Western powers have raised the prospect of new economic sanctions being imposed on Russia if it attacks neighbouring Ukraine.

The European Union is ready to impose "never-seen-before" economic sanctions on Russia if it attacks Ukraine, Denmark said on Monday, and EU foreign ministers said they would send a unified warning to Moscow.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday was given the chance to challenge a decision allowing him to be extradited to the United States to face 18 criminal charges including breaking a spying law to Britain's Supreme Court.

A Taliban delegation led by acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on Sunday started three days of talks in Oslo with Western government officials and Afghan civil society representatives amid a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.

Russia will face severe economic sanctions if it installs a puppet regime in Ukraine, a senior UK minister said on Sunday after Britain accused the Kremlin of seeking to install a pro-Russian leader there.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi now ranks as the “most popular global leader” with an approval rating of 71 percent, according to a survey by the Morning Consult Political Intelligence, a US consultancy firm.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has cancelled her wedding as the nation imposes new restrictions to slow the community spread of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, she told reporters on Sunday.

A Turkish court on Saturday ordered well-known journalist Sedef Kabas to be jailed pending trial on a charge of insulting President Tayyip Erdogan, CNN Turk said, targeting her with a law under which tens of thousands have been prosecuted.

With tens of thousands of Russian troops positioned near Ukraine, the Kremlin has kept the US and its allies guessing about its next moves in the worst security crisis to emerge between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.

The US government said on Friday it would suspend 44 China-bound flights from the United States by four Chinese carriers in response to the Chinese government's decision to suspend some US carrier flights over COVID-19 concerns.

The United States, the World Health Organization's top donor, is resisting proposals to make the agency more independent, four officials involved in the talks said, raising doubts about the Biden administration's long-term support for the U.N. agency.

As he starts his second term as UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres said Thursday the world is worse in many ways than it was five years ago because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and geopolitical tensions that have sparked conflicts everywhere — but unlike US President Joe Biden he thinks Russia will not invade Ukraine.