WORLD

A first attempt under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative ended in disappointing failure last month, but a second, led by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, will attempt on Thursday to return the United States to Moon for the first time in five decades.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are both expected in Rio de Janeiro for the first high-level G20 meeting of the year -- though not China's Wang Yi.

The International Court of Justice is holding a week of hearings after a request from the UN, with an unprecedented 52 countries giving their views on Israel's occupation.

Rockets at dawn, gunfire outside, hours of anxiety: a survivor of the October 7 attack shared his account of the day Gaza militants stormed his southern Israeli community, speaking into a video camera.

The former US president and current frontrunner for the 2024 nomination again refused to criticize Russian leader Vladimir Putin over Navalny's unexplained death, despite being offered the chance during a town hall meeting in South Carolina.

The army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) said they had settled days of negotiations on securing a majority to form a coalition government that will also include several smaller parties, after the February 8 polls returned no clear winner.

Alexander Smirnov, 43, a dual US and Israeli national, was arrested last week and indicted for fabricating claims that Biden's son demanded multi-million-dollar bribes from Ukrainian firm Burisma -- on whose board he was serving at the time -- to protect it from an investigation when Biden was vice president.

Fatigue and calls to give soldiers relief pose a dilemma for military leaders who need more manpower to hold off Russian attacks.

Tibetans on March 10 will commemorate the 1959 uprising against Chinese forces that led the future Nobel laureate -- and thousands of his followers -- to cross snowy Himalayan passes into neighboring India and set up a government in exile.

More than 8,800 junior doctors -- 71 percent of the trainee workforce -- have now quit, said Seoul's Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo, part of a spiraling protest against government plans to sharply increase medical school admissions.

The protest hopes to successfully replicate the year-long siege of highways into the capital that pressured Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government into abandoning its agricultural reform plans in 2021.

Washington indicted the WikiLeaks founder multiple times between 2018 and 2020 over its publication of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic files on the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is the second probe into a major online platform since Brussels introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), after targeting tech billionaire Elon Musk's X in December.

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and its arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7.

At least 90 percent of children under five in Gaza are affected by one or more infectious diseases, according to a joint assessment by the UN agencies for children, food and health.

Ukrainian troops, reeling from the loss of a key town, now face "extremely difficult" conditions all along the frontline with Russia because of delayed foreign aid, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Washington wants the 52-year-old Australian citizen extradited after he was charged there multiple times between 2018 and 2020 in connection with WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of files relating to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last week two Chinese crew members died after a boat capsized near Kinmen, an island administered by Taipei but located just five kilometers from the mainland city of Xiamen.

Almost 6,500 doctors submitted their resignations -- nearly half the junior workforce -- with 1,600 walking off the job, according to health ministry figures.

With its C919 aircraft, Beijing wants to challenge the decades-long dominance of top plane-makers Airbus and Boeing while reducing its reliance on foreign technology.

Israel hit Gaza with new air strikes on Tuesday as world powers grappled with how to broker a ceasefire ahead of a UN Security Council vote.

Papua New Guinea's prime minister labelled a mass tribal killing in the country's highlands an act of "domestic terrorism" Tuesday, while vowing tougher measures to tackle mounting "lawlessness".

South Korea says it has one of the lowest doctor-to-population ratios among developed countries, and the government is pushing hard to increase the number of doctors, partly to help a fast-ageing society.

A total of 127 people died in 24 hours, Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry said, as the main battlefront edged closer to far-southern Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians live in crowded shelters and tent camps.

Navalny's still-unexplained death at 47 in a prison in Russia's Arctic has drawn powerful condemnations from leaders around the world, starting with US President Joe Biden, who has squarely blamed Putin.

In response, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the 78-year-old's comments "shameful and grave" and said his government had called in Brazil's ambassador in protest.

Facing manpower and ammunition shortages, Ukraine was forced to withdraw from the industrial hub in the eastern Donetsk region, handing Moscow its first major territorial gain since May 2023.

The mother of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is being refused access to his body for a third day, his team said on Monday as his widow prepared to meet European foreign ministers.

The Eiffel Tower, one of the world's top tourist attractions, was closed Monday after staff went on strike, unions told AFP. The strike, which was called to protest over the way the monument is managed financially, could be extended, they said.