Sri Lankan police yesterday arrested a self-proclaimed exorcist after a nine-year-old girl she had beaten as part of a ritual died.

Cuba has adopted long-called for animal rights regulations, a groundbreaking victory for activists in the communist nation.

Myanmar’s United Nations envoy in New York vowed to fight on Saturday after the junta fired him for urging countries to use “any means necessary” to reverse a Feb. 1 coup that ousted the nation’s elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The planet is on “red alert” because governments are failing to meet their climate change goals, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday.

Ahmadiya Juaidi’s eyes are wide as she drinks a nutrition shake from a large orange mug, her thin fingers grasping the handle.

US conservatives praised Donald Trump at an annual gathering on Friday, even unveiling a golden statue of the former president, showing he remains a Republican political force despite violent scenes in Washington last month.

A rooster fitted with a knife for an illegal cockfight in southern India has killed its owner, sparking a manhunt for the organisers of the event, police

Kidnappers have freed 42 people, including 27 children, snatched from a school in central Nigeria 10 days ago, officials said yesterday, a day after more than 300 schoolgirls were abducted by gunmen in the northwest.

Former US president Donald Trump has signaled he will seek revenge on fellow Republicans who voted to impeach him last month, and he followed through Friday, endorsing an ex-aide against an Ohio congressman.

Saudi Arabia has said it “completely rejects” a declassified US report that found that de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 murder.

President Joe Biden has said that a US air strike against an Iranian-backed militia in eastern Syria, the first since he took office, should be seen by Iran as a warning.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince likely approved an operation to kill or capture a US-based journalist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to a newly declassified US intelligence report released Friday that could escalate pressure on the Biden administration to hold the kingdom accountable for a murder that drew bipartisan and international outrage.

Unidentified gunmen seized 317 schoolgirls in northwest Nigeria yesterday, police said, the second such kidnapping in little over a week in a region increasingly targeted by militants.

Japan has appointed a minister for loneliness following a recent rise in the number of suicides and the coronavirus pandemic’s exacerbation of the issue.

India and China have agreed to set up a hotline between their foreign ministers as the two nuclear-armed neighbours look to reduce tensions along a disputed Himalayan border where their troops have been locked in confrontation since last summer.

The Sri Lankan government has lifted a controversial ban on the burial of bodies of people whose deaths were caused by the Covid-19 disease, a health ministry spokesman said.

Facebook yesterday restored access to news for its Australian users after reaching agreement with the government on a landmark law requiring it and other tech firms to pay for journalistic content.

China yesterday condemned a motion passed by Dutch lawmakers declaring that Beijing’s actions towards minority groups in Xinjiang amounted to genocide.

Public hospitals are deserted. Government offices left dark. And the trains don’t leave the stations.

Global military spending, driven in part by Chinese naval expansion, reached record levels in 2020 despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing economic contraction, a British think-tank said on Thursday.