WORLD

Myanmar produced an estimated 1,080 metric tons of opium -- essential for producing heroin -- this year, according to the latest report by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Biden's visit was part of US efforts around the world to contain China's rising economic power -- and to secure supplies of crucial materials needed for high-tech manufacturing.

The UN is convening the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva with thousands due to participate, including heads of government and state, in a search for concrete responses to record displacements. The number of people displaced worldwide passed 114 million by the end of September, an all-time high.

When Kenya banned FGM in 2011, few expected that the practice -- traditionally performed in public with pomp and ceremony -- would migrate to backroom clinics and private homes, with nurses and pharmacists doing the procedure underground.

In the weeks following the Hamas attack, around 4,000 Ukrainians left Israel, according to embassy figures.

Aid trucks stalled at the Gaza border, hospitals treating missing limbs: UN Security Council envoys visiting Egypt on Monday encountered the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war, days after the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution.

ECOWAS commission President Omar Touray said a heads of state group from Benin, Togo and Sierra Leone would engage with Niger regime's CNSP leadership to decide on progress towards a transition and other conditions for lifting sanctions.

The United States is helping lead the charge at UN climate talks to phase out fossil fuels, but the superpower's status as the world's top oil producer is already casting doubt on its credibility.

The United Nations has only been able to reach a fraction of the nearly 25 million people needing aid in war-devastated Sudan, the head of the UN's humanitarian response in the country says.

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Washington Tuesday to meet President Joe Biden and plead his case before Republicans balking at sending more money for his fight against Russia, amid warnings aid will run out in weeks.

Israel bombed southern Gaza's main city on Monday after Hamas warned no Israeli hostages would leave the territory alive unless its demands for prisoner releases were met.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces questions Monday over whether his "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme to help the struggling hospitality sector during the pandemic spurred the spread of Covid-19.

Several Israeli soldiers were wounded when Hezbollah launched a drone attack from Lebanon on Sunday, both the Israeli army and the militant group said.

Egypt is gearing up this month for a presidential election certain to win incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a third term in office, despite rising public discontent as the country faces its worst ever economic crisis.

The death toll in Gaza has risen 17,000, mostly women and children, the Hamas-run health ministry said, with vast areas reduced to a rubble-strewn wasteland of bombed-out and bullet-scarred buildings.

Rina Gonoi, 24, won praise but also hate when she went public last year -- after a military probe found insufficient evidence -- accusing fellow soldiers of assaulting her while others watched and laughed.

Hollywood celebrities are paying the price for taking sides in the Gaza war -- plastering their social media accounts with slogans such as "Free Palestine" or "I stand with Israel".

The 35-year-old, whose real name and country of origin have been withheld for her safety, is facing a torturous vicious cycle.

Hunter Biden was indicted late Thursday on multiple counts of tax evasion, the second time this year President Joe Biden's troubled son has been charged by a special counsel investigating his personal and business dealings.

The UN Security Council meets on Gaza Friday under acute pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and will vote on urging an immediate ceasefire after weeks of ruinous war.

Zimbabwe will hold nine by-elections on Saturday with opposition candidates largely absent as President Emmerson Mnangagwa cements his control over the mineral-rich nation.

The leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia used a rare face-to-face meeting to urge oil producers to stick to pledged supply cuts, a joint statement said Thursday.

Ukraine urged residents to save electricity Thursday after a power plant near the front line was hit by shelling, the first such warning this winter as temperatures plunge below freezing.

Climate change caused by human activity made torrential rains that have lashed East Africa since October and killed more than 300 people up to twice as intense, a scientific study said Thursday.

Sat in a soggy field and strapped into a virtual reality headset, Ukrainian soldier Igor was piloting a military drone test flight using a small control panel in his hands.

Fatah, the largest Palestinian party, has seen its popularity plunge during the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, from where the Islamists violently ousted rivals Fatah in 2007.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan travels to Athens on Thursday in a keenly watched visit billed as an attempted "new chapter" between the NATO allies and historic rivals after years of tension.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen told Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday that the bloc and its biggest trading partner must address their differences, in the first in-person EU-China summit in over four years.

Agnes Chow was trapped in Hong Kong, had her passport seized and was branded a "foreign agent" after years as one of the city's most prominent democracy activists.