AFP news

Yoon briefly suspended civilian rule this month, plunging South Korea into its worst political crisis in decades.

They are part of an Israeli government effort to fill a void left by tens of thousands of Palestinian construction workers barred from entering Israel since Hamas's unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.

The country has started seven days of national mourning, with the acting president flying to the crash site in southwestern Muan for a memorial as teams of US and South Korean investigators raced to establish what caused Sunday's disaster.

The "Santa Claus rally" got off to a good start but US stocks then fell across the board on Friday, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both dropping more than one percent.

On Christmas Day, the Estlink 2 submarine cable that carries electricity from Finland to Estonia was disconnected from the grid, just over a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.

Yemen's civil aviation authority said the airport planned to reopen on Friday after the strikes that it said occurred while the UN aircraft "was getting ready for its scheduled flight".

Oleksandr deserted from the front line in eastern Ukraine after watching his fellow servicemen being pulverised by Russian bombardments for six months.

Last Friday, US President Joe Biden authorized the drawdown of up to $571.3 million for defense assistance to the self-ruled island, which China regards as its own territory.

Despite international observers raising concerns about irregularities in the October 9 elections, the country's highest court on Monday confirmed that Daniel Chapo of the Frelimo party, which has been in power since 1975, won the presidential race with 65.17 percent of the vote.

According to state-owned energy company Petroperu, the cleaning of half a dozen beaches in Talara province has almost finished and work was planned to mitigate the impact on birds, fauna and commerce in the area, whose population relies on fishing and tourism.

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino on Thursday ruled out negotiations with US President-elect Donald Trump over control of the Panama Canal, denying that China was interfering in its operation.

Immigration was a major issue at the ballot box at the UK's July general election which saw the Conservatives ousted after 14 years in power.

Erling Haaland missed a penalty as crisis-torn Manchester City failed to end their dismal run with a 1-1 draw against Everton, but it was United's travails and Liverpool's remarkable run that took center-stage on Thursday.

Both crew members -- a 55-year-old man on Flying Fish Arctos and a 65-year-old man on Bowline -- were struck on the head by booms as the yachts raced southwards along the New South Wales coast, police said.

Israeli air strikes pummelled Sanaa's international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday, with Huthi rebel media reporting six deaths.

Han Duck-soo took over as acting president from President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was suspended following a parliamentary vote over his move to impose martial law on December 3.

The 115.5 trillion yen ($730 billion) budget for the year from April 2025, greenlighted by the Cabinet, includes 8.7 trillion yen in defense spending.

Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 late on Thursday evening at a hospital in New Delhi. He will also be accorded a state funeral.

Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia's military, including in the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock border incursion in August.

According to industry experts, Mexicans are increasingly switching from traditionally dominant sedans to Chinese vehicles due to a combination of comfort, technology and price.

The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead diverted far off course across the Caspian Sea. It crashed Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.

He used his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" ("to the city and the world") message to the world's 1.4 billion Catholics to call for talks for a just peace in Ukraine as the country was pummeled by 170 Russian missiles and drones on Christmas morning.

In an unrelated incident in Tartus province, a stronghold of deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor reported deadly clashes over the attempted arrest of a former official.

Still popular with the poor and working class of the South American nation, Bouterse -- who died Tuesday -- rose to power after a 1980 coup as a young sergeant major in the army. He stepped down in 1987 under international pressure in the wake of political violence he was accused of orchestrating.

A "terrorist act" sank the cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week, the Russian state-owned company that owns the vessel said Wednesday.

A 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island triggered huge waves that swept into coastal areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other nations around the Indian Ocean basin.

A total of 1,534 detainees escaped the high-security prison located about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the capital, said national police chief Bernardino Rafael at a press conference.

The process of restarting the plant in Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, involved both Israeli and Palestinian stakeholders who could have a hand in the territory's future, especially amid renewed hopes for a ceasefire in recent days.

Japan's Nikkei index closed up 1.1 percent, boosted by comments from the Bank of Japan governor and share price gains for top-selling automaker Toyota.