AFP news

US President Joe Biden equated his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping with "dictators" on Tuesday as he addressed a Democratic Party donors reception in the presence of journalists.

Chinese imports of Russian oil last month hit their highest level since Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Beijing's customs data showed Tuesday.

A presidential statement issued late Monday said Tinubu made the appointments after sacking all the incumbent military service chiefs and advisers, as well as the national police chief and head of the customs service, "with immediate effect."

The US Coast Guard said late Monday that its search for a missing submersible vessel near the Titanic wreck had been completed for the day, but that a national guard unit and the company operating the five-passenger underwater mission would continue scouring the surface overnight.

China's central bank on Tuesday cut two benchmark interest rates, following several similar measures in recent days in a bid to counter the post-Covid growth slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

Scientists have used stem cells to create structures that resemble human embryos in the lab, in a first that has prompted calls for stricter regulation in the rapidly advancing field.

Police spokesman Fred Enanga said the death toll was now 42, including 37 students.

The European Union and Kenya signed a trade deal Monday in a coup for Brussels as it seeks deeper economic ties with Africa in the face of competition from China.

Voting concluded in Mali on Sunday on a new constitution in the ruling junta's first electoral test, with insecurity and political disagreement preventing voting in some areas.

The delegation brought the voice of a continent that has badly suffered from repercussions of the Ukraine conflict, particularly with rising grain prices.

Pressure to speed cuts in carbon pollution took a back seat at UN climate talks that ended late Thursday night, as emerging economies, including China, demanded that rich ones vastly scale up climate financing.

Sitting on top of a yellow jerry can of fuel, Jeannine waits for customers on a sidewalk in Benin's economic capital Cotonou, but business is slow.

Nigeria's central bank has abolished the country's multiple exchange rate system and effectively floated the naira currency, the bank said, as new President Bola Ahmed Tinubu revamps the country's monetary policies.

The world's first international treaty to protect the high seas is scheduled to be adopted Monday at the United Nations, a huge step for the "historic" environmental accord after more than 15 years of discussions.

Greece on Thursday pursued a grim search for survivors a day after a fishing boat overloaded with migrants capsized and sank in the Ionian Sea, with the number of victims feared to reach into the hundreds.

Kenyan President William Ruto's government is set to present its budget to parliament Thursday in the face of widespread anger over a range of proposed tax hikes to shore up depleted public finances.

International waters -- outside the jurisdiction of any single state -- cover more than 60 percent of the world's oceans.

At least 79 migrants died after their boat sank off the Peloponnese, Greece's coastguard said Wednesday, as concern mounted that the death toll could rise much higher.

Several thousand people took to streets in Poland Wednesday to protest a near-total ban on abortion that they blame for a new case of a death of a pregnant woman.

Meta said it did not want to comment on the details of the cases but told AFP it demanded that its subcontractors made psychological support available 24/7.

Marvel Comics artist John Romita Snr, primarily known for his work on "The Amazing Spider-Man", has died, his son said Tuesday.

Shell plans to maintain oil production levels until 2030, the British energy giant said Wednesday, triggering an outcry from green campaigners who also slammed a big payout for shareholders.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Tuesday for maintaining but streamlining a decade-old peacekeeping mission in troubled Mali, whose military leaders have clashed with the West and turned to Russia.

Police believe most of the bodies found in a forest near the Indian Ocean town of Malindi belong to followers of Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a taxi driver-turned-preacher who has been in police custody since April 14.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told US President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday that Western-backed Ukraine is "making progress" in its offensive to push Russia back from occupied territories.

President Vladimir Putin claimed Tuesday that Ukraine's casualties in its much-anticipated counteroffensive were ten times higher than Moscow's even as Kyiv said it was making gains and "moving forward".

Over the past two weeks, about 40 baby penguins have been transferred here from Bird Island, an islet home to one of Africa's largest penguin colonies about 60 kilometres off Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth.

At least three people were killed and 13 wounded in a Russian missile attack on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa early Wednesday, authorities said.

Four senior members of the US Congress across party lines asked whether South Africa should remain in the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA.