AFP news

The real-estate sector has long accounted for around a quarter of gross domestic product and experienced dazzling growth for two decades but a years-long housing slump has battered growth as authorities eye a target of around five percent for 2024.

The paper published with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) highlighted that poverty rates were three times higher in countries at war, as 2023 saw the most conflicts around the world since the Second World War.

New Delhi held firm its defiant stance towards Ottawa -- an approach in sharp contrast to its compliant attitude this week towards the United States, where India is also accused of directing a separate assassination plot.

Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called axis of resistance led by Iran, which on October 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel.

More than two and a half years into the war, Kyiv is slowly but steadily losing new territory in its eastern Donbas region and under mounting pressure to forge an exit strategy -- which it says must start with ramped-up Western support.

The short story writer and novelist is best known overseas for her Man Booker Prize-winning "The Vegetarian", her first novel translated into English.

Narrowly spared the censor's axe in a Britain where being gay was only partially decriminalized, its tale of coming out and fleeing home has found a new lease of life with a younger audience on social media platforms including TikTok.

The Senate will give its verdict at the end of the second day of an impeachment trial against the embattled number two to President William Ruto.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company controls more than half the world's output of chips used in everything from Apple's iPhones to Nvidia's cutting-edge artificial intelligence hardware.

Abbas Nilforoushan, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm, was killed on September 27 alongside Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Lebanon's Hezbollah, in an Israeli strike on south Beirut.

China and Britain are seeking to reset ties frayed in recent years by Beijing's security crackdown in Hong Kong and human rights concerns in regions including its troubled Xinjiang region.

Macron was quoted as saying in a cabinet meeting Tuesday that Israel "must not forget" it owed its existence to a United Nations resolution after its troops fired on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

Seven & i Holdings last month rejected a US$40-billion takeover bid -- representing the biggest foreign takeover of a Japanese firm -- but the Canadian side has since sweetened the offer by around 20 percent.

The ruling was made in connection to a case where a convenience store worker was attacked by a man shouting "feminists deserve to be beaten" because she had short hair.

The strike on south Beirut, the militant group's main stronghold, was the first in several days of calm in the area, after an intense period of bombardment earlier in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

The 27-nation European Union is seeking to work more closely with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- which brings together Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- in addressing conflicts in both the Middle East and Ukraine.

The October 14 strike on the north Lebanon village of Aito in the Zgharta district killed 23 people, including at least 12 women and two children, many of them displaced from south Lebanon, according to the official National News Agency.

On Monday, the French Rugby Federation (FFR) and the body running the top two leagues in France, the National Rugby League (LNR), voiced their concern with the idea.

Mamadou Dian Balde, the UN's Sudan regional refugee coordinator, told AFP that the three-million mark will likely be crossed in the next two to three weeks.

Demand for oil, gas and coal is still projected to peak by the end of the decade, possibly creating a surplus of fossil fuels, the IEA said in its annual World Energy Outlook.

Britain's annual inflation rate fell to a three-year low in September, official data showed Wednesday, fuelling speculation that the Bank of England will resume cutting interest rates next month.

Myanmar and China have the world's worst internet freedom, with declines reported in a number of other countries led by Kyrgyzstan, a study said Wednesday.

A wave of touching photos showing great moments in time is fascinating amateur historians online.

Officials have in recent weeks unveiled a string of measures to reignite the world's number-two economy and bring an end to years of depressed business activity with an eye to achieving five percent annual growth.

Sixteen migrants, all male, were aboard the Italian navy's Libra patrol vessel en route to Albania and expected to arrive Wednesday morning, a government source told AFP.

Even President Emmanuel Macron is involved in the debate centered on a perceived "loss of sovereignty" if popular painkiller Doliprane falls into American hands.

A grave Trudeau branded New Delhi's actions as "unacceptable" during a press conference in Ottawa on the diplomatic expulsions, which saw tensions reach a new height after the 2023 murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

A Lebanese security official told AFP the building "housed families displaced from Lebanon's south, and was targeted shortly after a man had arrived in a car".

Early voting is underway in most of America, with polling suggesting an agonizingly tight race nationally and a margin-of-error tussle in Pennsylvania and the other hotly-contested swing states likely to determine the outcome.