Author: By AFP

This photo provided by the US Justice Department on December 19, 2025 shows an undated picture of former US president Bill Clinton (C) with US singers Michael Jackson (L) and Diana Ross at an undisclosed location. (Handout / US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE / AFP)  Victims of disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein joined a chorus of criticism on Monday over the Trump administration’s slow release and heavy redaction of records from the investigation into his alleged sex crimes. President Donald Trump said meanwhile, in his first comments since the release of the files, that people who “innocently met” Epstein in the…

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Armed members of the militant group Al-Shabaab. [File, AP] A Kenyan member of the Al-Shabaab militant group who received pilot training in the Philippines was sentenced to life in prison on Monday for conspiring to mount a 9/11-style attack in the United States. Cholo Abdi Abdullah was convicted last year of conspiring to murder US nationals, conspiring to commit aircraft piracy and other offenses. “Cholo Abdi Abdullah was a highly trained Al-Shabaab operative who was dedicated to recreating the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks on behalf of a vicious terrorist organization,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “Abdullah…

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Armed members of the militant group Al-Shabaab. [File, AP] A Kenyan member of the Al-Shabaab militant group who received pilot training in the Philippines was sentenced to life in prison on Monday for conspiring to mount a 9/11-style attack in the United States. Cholo Abdi Abdullah was convicted last year of conspiring to murder US nationals, conspiring to commit aircraft piracy and other offenses. “Cholo Abdi Abdullah was a highly trained Al-Shabaab operative who was dedicated to recreating the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks on behalf of a vicious terrorist organization,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “Abdullah…

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US President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order easing restrictions on marijuana in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on December 18, 2025. [AFP] US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, paving the way for more medical research on the use of cannabis products. The long-awaited move will take marijuana out of the most hazardous  category of narcotics alongside heroin and LSD, although it does not legalize its use across the United States. But Trump said that while it “no way sanctions its use…

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Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro speaking during an event marking the anniversary of the death of Liberator Simon Bolivar in Caracas on December 17, 2025. [AFP] The leaders of Brazil and Mexico on Thursday offered to step in to try and avert the risk of war between the United States and Venezuela. The Latin American heavyweights are looking on in dismay as Washington ramps up military and economic pressure on Nicholas Maduro’s government, raising fears of a direct effort to unseat the Venezuelan leader. The United Nations Security Council will meet next Tuesday at the request of Caracas — backed by…

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) and the Prime Minister of Qatar Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani at the State Department in Washington, DC, on December 17, 2025, in Washington, DC. [AFP] The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two more judges of the International Criminal Court after they rejected an attempt by Israel to end a war crimes probe in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had already ordered sanctions on judges and prosecutors in the case, explicitly linked the new measures to a vote Monday in which the two judges sided with…

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US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during an event with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 6, 2025. [AFP] The US health department on Thursday announced proposed measures that would effectively ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, significantly expanding the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back protections for trans people. The series of sweeping proposals announced by US health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials would cut off vital federal funding from hospitals that provide pediatric gender transition services — including puberty blockers and surgical interventions –…

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A judge gavel and cuffs. [Courtesy/GettyImages] A former morgue manager at the prestigious Harvard Medical School was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts donated for scientific research, the US Justice Department said. Cedric Lodge, 58, pleaded guilty in May to trafficking the stolen remains, which include internal organs, brains, skin, hands, faces and dissected heads, from 2018 through at least March 2020. He was fired from the university in May 2023, Harvard has said. Investigators said Lodge and his wife, Denise, took body parts from the school near Boston to their home in…

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Colonel Oscar Perez, chief of the Providence Police Department, speaks during a press conference into the ongoing investigation into the December 13 mass shooting at Brown University. [AFP] FBI experts on Tuesday combed through the vicinity of a weekend mass shooting that killed two students at the elite Brown University, as the hunt for the gunman dragged into a fourth day. Images posted by the bureau on social media showed laboratory specialists  and evidence response teams conducting a forensic search on the snow-covered grounds outside the Providence, Rhode Island campus. The shooting happened Saturday, when a man with a rifle…

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Mourners attend the funeral of Yaakov Levitan Halevi, a victim of Sunday’s Bondi Beach attack, at the Magnolia Chapel at Macquarie Park Cemetery in Sydney on December 17, 2025. [AFP] A young girl and Holocaust survivors were among 15 people allegedly shot and killed by a father and his son at a Jewish Hanukkah festival gathering on Australia’s Bondi Beach. The elder gunman, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, was killed in a shootout with police. His 24-year-old son, Naveed, is in hospital, under police guard and charged on multiple counts including terrorism and 15 murders. The shooting victims, some killed while trying…

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A woman weeps after laying flowers outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on December 16, 2025, to honour victims of the Bondi Beach shooting. [AFP] The father and son allegedly behind one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings spent nearly the entire month of November in the Philippines, authorities in Manila confirmed Tuesday, with the father entering as an “Indian national”. Sajid Akram and his son Naveed, who allegedly killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, entered the country on November 1 with the southern province of Davao listed as their final destination.…

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A rabbi addresses mourners at a tribute outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on December 16, 2025, honouring victims of the Bondi Beach shooting. [AFP] A father and son were driven by “Islamic State ideology” when they fired on crowds at Bondi Beach in one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday. Sajid Akram and his son Naveed opened fire on people thronging the famous beach for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday evening, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more. Authorities said the attack was designed to sow panic among the nation’s Jews, but have…

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the 2025 International Conference of the Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling at the European Commission In Brussels, on December 10, 2025. [AFP] The EU must take “very important” decisions on funding Ukraine at a crunch summit this week, but talks over using frozen Russian assets are getting harder, the bloc’s top diplomat said Monday. “We are not there yet, and it is increasingly difficult, but we’re doing the work and we still have some days,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told journalists. “We will not leave the meeting before we…

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Reporters gather outside the headquarters of Unification Church in Seoul on December 15, 2025, as police raid the building. [AFP] South Korean police raided the headquarters of the cult-like Unification Church on Monday and named its leader as a suspect in the bribery of several high-profile politicians. The church, known for its mass weddings, is at the centre of a mounting scandal in South Korea over alleged payments to lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties. Prosecutors raided the church’s headquarters in Seoul on Monday as well as the imposing countryside residence of leader Han Hak-ja, who is already on…

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Mourners gather by floral tributes at the Bondi Pavillion in memory of the victims of a shooting at Bondi Beach, in Sydney on December 15, 2025. [AFP] A father and son opened fire on a Jewish festival at Australia’s Bondi Beach in a shooting spree that killed 15 people, including a child, authorities said Monday, denouncing the attack as antisemitic “terrorism”. The duo fired into crowds packing the Sydney beach for the start of Hanukkah on Sunday evening, sending people fleeing in panic across the tourist hotspot. A 10-year-old girl was among the dead in the country’s worst mass shooting for…

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Health workers move a woman on a stretcher to an ambulance after a shooting incident at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 14, 2025. [AFP] Two gunmen opened fire at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding multiple others in a “terrorist incident” aimed at a gathering for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in Australia. Emergency responders rushed at least 29 people to local hospitals from the beach, one of the biggest tourist draws in Australia’s largest city, said New South Wales police. One of the alleged shooters was killed, and the second was in a critical…

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First responders with the Providence Fire Department near the Barus & Holley building, the site of a mass shooting, at Brown University campus in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 13, 2025. [AFP] Hundreds of police officers hunted Sunday for a gunman who killed two people and wounded nine others at Brown University, plunging the eastern US campus into lockdown. The streets around the university in Providence, Rhode Island were filled with emergency vehicles hours after the shooter opened fire Saturday at a building where exams were taking place. The violence is the latest in a long line of school attacks…

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A displaced resident at a temporary camp in Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province on December 14, 2025, amid clashes along Cambodia-Thailand border. [AFP] Renewed border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand entered a second week Sunday after Bangkok denied US President Donald Trump’s claim that a truce had been agreed to halt the deadly fighting. The conflict, rooted in a colonial-era demarcation dispute along their 800-kilometre (500-mile) border, has displaced around 800,000 people, officials said. “I have been here for six days and I feel sad that the fighting continues,” 63-year-old Sean Leap told AFP at an evacuation centre in Cambodia’s border…

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A vendor arranges newspapers on a stall in Cotonou, on December 8, 2025. Benin’s president said the “situation is completely under control” after the government thwarted an attempted coup. [AFP] Some 200 Nigerian and Ivorian troops are in Benin as part of a security mission supporting the government after a weekend coup attempt, the country’s foreign minister said Thursday. The small west African nation was rocked by a failed putsch Sunday, which saw Nigeria, France and Ivory Coast mobilise in support of the civilian government. “There are currently around 200 soldiers present, who came to lend a hand at the…

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Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and Russian President Vladimir Putin. [AFP] Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reaffirmed his support to Venezuela in a phone call with long-time ally President Nicolas Maduro, the Kremlin said. The call comes after the United States seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, the latest escalation in the long-standing friction between the two countries. Russia has fostered warm ties with Venezuela, and Maduro visited Moscow earlier this year, attending an annual military parade and signing a broad partnership agreement with Putin. Follow The Standard channel on WhatsApp In a phone call on Thursday, “Vladimir…

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This aerial photo shows a general view of Peusangan river after flash floods in Bireuen district Indonesia’s Aceh province on December 9, 2025.[AFP] The death toll in Indonesia’s devastating floods closed in on the 1,000 mark Thursday as hundreds of thousands more continued to face shortages, with frustration growing over relief efforts. Disaster mitigation agency spokesman Abdul Muhari said 990 people had died by late Thursday in the deluge, which laid waste to the northwestern island of Sumatra — the biggest disaster of its kind in recent years. More than 220 people are still missing. Tropical storms and monsoon rains…

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 Pile of tasks are placed on the ground at the immigration office during a news conference in Bangkok. A global ban on ivory in 1989 halted widespread poaching but it has steadily worsened since 2004, mostly going to Asia to be carved into chopsticks, statues and jewelry.[AFP] Demand for exotic pets drove seizures of live animals to a record high in 2025, the Interpol police agency said Thursday as it announced a clampdown that led to the interception of nearly 30,000 animals. Interpol said that wildlife crime is now an industry worth more than $20 billion a year, ranging from the movement of thousands…

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A person whistles as US Customs and Border Patrol agents conduct operations in Kenner, Louisiana, on December 6, 2025.[AFP] Back in 2018, President Donald Trump disputed having used the epithet “shithole” to describe some countries whose citizens emigrated to the United States. Nowadays, he embraces it and pushes his anti-immigrant and xenophobic tirades even further. Case in point: during a rally in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday that was supposed to focus on his economic policy, the 79-year-old Republican openly ranted and reused the phrase that had sparked an outcry during his first term. “We had a meeting…

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South Korean Oceans Minister Chun Jae-soo (C) speaks to reporters upon his arrival at Incheon international airport, west of Seoul on December 11, 2025.[AFP] A South Korean minister resigned on Thursday after being accused of receiving illegal funds from the Unification Church, a cult-like movement linked to widespread influence-peddling. The church, known for its mass weddings, is currently being investigated on charges of unlawful donations linked to the country’s former first lady Kim Keon Hee. Kim’s conservative husband, Yoon Suk Yeol, was ousted in April and is now in prison following a disastrous but brief imposition of martial law, with…

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A man walks by the Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine, a memorial dedicated to Ukrainian soldiers, in Kyiv on December 9, 2025. [AFP] Military aid for Ukraine plummeted in the second half of 2025 as falling European contributions failed to make up for the halt in US support, data from the Kiel Institute showed Wednesday. As US President Donald Trump wound down US contributions at the beginning of the year, Europe stepped up with record pledges of almost 20 billion euros ($23 billion) between March and June, more than offsetting the overall shortfall. But Europe was only…

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This photo taken on December 4, 2025 shows an elephant figurine made of ivory displayed at an antiquities shop in Tokyo. [AFP] At his store in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district, Hajime Sasaki displays a disparate array of wares, from chopsticks to Buddha statues — including many made of ivory. International trade in elephant ivory is illegal, but Japan hosts one of the world’s largest remaining legal domestic markets for the product, which can only be bought and sold within its borders. It is fed with stockpiles of ivory imported before the international ban more than 30 years ago, or bought…

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President Donald Trump during an event at Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on December 9, 2025. [AFP] US and Indian trade negotiators begin two days of talks Wednesday as they try to reach a deal amid geopolitical turbulence after Washington hit New Delhi with huge tariffs over its purchases of Russian oil. The 50 percent levies on most goods was imposed in August, with US officials arguing the imports of discounted Russian crude effectively bankroll Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Deputy US Trade Representative Rick Switzer’s visit comes a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi embraced Russian President…

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A teenager holds a mobile phone displaying a message from social media platform Instagram after the account was locked for age verification in Sydney on December 9, 2025. [AFP] Australia banned young teenagers from social media on Wednesday, launching a world-first crackdown designed to unglue children from addictive scrolling on the likes of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. A raft of the world’s most popular apps and websites face US$33 million fines if they fail to purge Australia-based users younger than 16. Australia becomes one of the first nations to so forcefully push back against tech titans wielding immense political power.…

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Andrej Babis, leader of the ANO movement, addresses a press conference at the ANO headquarters on October 4, 2025, in Prague after the parliamentary elections. [AFP] Andrej Babis, a billionaire supporter of US President Donald Trump, returned to power as Czech prime minister on Tuesday, signalling a possible end to Ukraine aid and potentially rockier ties with the European Union. Babis’s ANO movement, which won October parliamentary elections, teamed up with two eurosceptic parties to form a coalition government. In its policy statement, the coalition said the EU had “its limits” and no right to impose decisions infringing on the…

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A worker drives a delivery truck of South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang in Seoul on December 9, 2025. [AFP] South Korean police raided the Seoul headquarters of e-commerce giant Coupang on Tuesday over a recent data leak believed to have affected almost two-thirds of the country’s population. Coupang is South Korea’s most popular online shopping platform, serving millions of customers with lightning-fast deliveries of products from groceries to gadgets. But the company suffered a massive data leak this year and was forced to alert customers that their names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses and some order histories had been…

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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain’s PM Keir Starmer, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and France’s President Emmanuel Macron at 10 Downing Street after a meeting in central London on December 8, 2025. [AFP] More than 250 human rights groups and other NGOs on Tuesday renewed pressure on the German government to take in hundreds of Afghans stranded in Pakistan who had been offered sanctuary by Berlin. The organisations, including Amnesty International, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch and church groups, urged the government to bring the roughly 1,800 Afghans to Germany from Pakistan before the end of the year. Those affected…

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This photograph taken on October 8, 2025 shows Santosh Devi putting a light bulb at her house in Rajasthan’s Beawar district. [AFP] Santosh Devi is proud to have brought light and hope to her hamlet in western India, taking up solar engineering through a programme for women like her whose husbands suffer chronic disease from mining work. Her husband is bedridden with silicosis, a respiratory illness caused by inhaling fine silica dust which is common across some 33,000 mines in Rajasthan state, where the couple and their four children live. Santosh, 36, has joined seven other women for a three-month…

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A horse-drawn carriage carries passengers through a flooded road past an abandoned gas station in Bandung, West Java on December 5, 2025. [AFP] Survivors in Indonesia were piecing back shattered lives Friday after devastating floods killed more than 1,600 people across five countries, with fears of fresh misery as more rain looms. Indonesia has borne the brunt of the disaster, with its toll rising to 846 dead and 547 missing, authorities said. Many are in the island of Sumatra’s northern Aceh province where more than 800,000 people have also been displaced. Sri Lanka has reported 486 deaths, Thailand 276 and…

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A dolphin swims in the pool of the Dolphins arena of MarineLand theme park in Antibes southeastern France, on November 27, 2025. [AFP] The Mediterranean’s first sanctuary for dolphins that have lived in captivity will open off Italy next year, as demand for re-homing rises with the closure of marine parks across Europe. “We must develop a new model for managing dolphins  in a natural but supervised environment,” Carmelo Fanizza, head of the San Paolo Dolphin Refuge, told AFP. Located off the coast of Taranto in the southern Italian region of Puglia, the sanctuary still needs a final green light…

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James Skea, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) poses during a photo session in Saint-Denis, in the outskirts of Paris, on December 4, 2025. [AFP] With US President Donald Trump and other sceptics calling climate change a hoax, the UN’s climate science body must tell the world in a “very clear way” that humans are heating the planet, its chairman told AFP. Jim Skea, a Scottish professor, chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which held a five-day meeting in a skyscraper outside Paris this week to begin drafting the next major UN climate assessment. The…

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A man walks with his bicycle through flood waters on a street in Vietnam’s Lam Dong province on December 5, 2025, following weeks of heavy rain. [AFP] Heavy rain in Vietnam triggered flooding that killed at least two people and caused more than a dozen landslides, state media said Friday, adding to what authorities called the “most unusual” year of natural disasters in the country’s history. South-central Vietnam has been lashed by weeks of heavy rain, submerging hundreds of thousands of homes in coastal tourism hotspots and causing deadly landslides in mountainous regions. Downpours inundated thousands more homes in Lam…

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) and Kenyan Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi (L) participate in a Health Framework of Cooperation signing ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC on December 4, 2025. [AFP] The United States on Thursday signed a $2.5 billion (Sh323.8 billion) health aid deal with Kenya, the first such bilateral agreement since President Donald Trump dismantled the historic US aid agency and sidelined NGOs. Trump administration officials said the agreement would be the first in a series of agreements with developing countries’ governments, which will be asked to share the bill and cooperate with…

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EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner holds a press conference to present the EU Drugs Strategy and the Action Plan against drug trafficking at the EU headquarters in Brussels on December 4, 2025.[AFP] The European Commission on Thursday unveiled a new plan to combat drug trafficking and to alert member states more quickly about new psychotropic substances circulating on the continent. The fight against illicit drugs is primarily the responsibility of the 27 EU members, but the executive wants to push for a coordinated response to the problem. The issue has been brought back into the spotlight…

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Salvador Nasralla, presidential candidate for the opposition Liberal Party, gestures during a press conference in Tegucigalpa on December 2, 2025. [AFP] Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez is not planning any immediate return to his country due to threats for his life, his wife told AFP, after the former leader received a surprise pardon from President Donald Trump. From her home in Tegucigalpa, Ana Garcia thanked the US president, saying the pardon put an end to an “injustice” that she blamed in part on former Democratic President Joe Biden. “He’s not thinking about returning to public or political life, but rather…

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Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accompanied by Britain’s King Charles III walk to inspect a Guard of Honour, during a Ceremonial Welcome in the Quadrangle. [AFP] German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier arrived in London on Wednesday for the start of a state visit, the first by the official German head of state in 27 years. The three-day trip, which includes a Windsor Castle state banquet and a speech to parliament, takes place as a deepening security alliance has helped rebuild London-Berlin ties that frayed in the turbulent post-Brexit years. Steinmeier will meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer later Wednesday for talks focusing on…

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England’s captain Ben Stokes speaks during a press conference at The Gabba in Brisbane on December 3, 2025, ahead of the second Ashes cricket Test against Australia. [AFP] England cricket captain Ben Stokes said Wednesday the sudden death of former batsman Robin Smith at the age of 62 “hits you hard”. The South Africa-born Smith, who had moved to Australia and lived in Perth, attended the first Ashes Test almost a fortnight ago and met some of the England and England Lions players. Smith, who played 62 Tests between 1988 and 1996, has been hailed as “a batter ahead of…

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People protest against the ICE and Border Patrol operation outside of City Hall in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 1, 2025. [AFP] The US government has halted immigration applications for citizens from 19 nations including Afghanistan, Yemen and Haiti, an official memorandum said Tuesday, deepening the nation’s sweeping crackdown on migration. Authorities paused green card and citizenship processing, according to the memo, for people from countries already subject to travel restrictions announced in June by President Donald Trump. Those 19 nations also include Venezuela, Sudan and Somalia. Follow The Standard channel on WhatsApp Senior US officials have signaled in recent…

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 Rustem Umerov speaks during a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US delegation in Hallandale Beach, Florida on November 30, 2025. [AFP] High-stakes US-Russia talks on ending the war in Ukraine failed to yield a breakthrough on Tuesday, as the Kremlin said “no compromise” had been found yet on the key question of territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin, after earlier signalling that his forces were ready to fight on to achieve Russia’s initial war goals. The meeting is a crucial…

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Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Supreme Court during a state court evidentiary hearing in the murder case of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in New York, on December 2, 2025. [AFP] The defense for the 27-year-old suspect accused of killing a top health insurance executive in New York sought to exclude evidence presented by the prosecution as he appeared in court for a second day Tuesday. Luigi Mangione is charged with the second-degree murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the largest US health insurer. Thompson, 50, was shot dead on a Manhattan street on December 4, 2024. Mangione, who…

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Donald Trump wears adhesive bandages on the back of his hand during a meeting of his cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House on December 02, 2025 in Washington. [AFP] The US Department of Justice has dismissed eight immigration judges in New York City, the association representing them said Tuesday, amid tensions with the courts as President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on undocumented migrants.According to the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), which confirmed media reports, the eight judges all worked at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. The address houses a court that reviews cases of migrants…

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Maria Jose de la Fuente, oncology patient and spokesperson of breast cancer association AMAMA. [AFP] Anabel Cano thought cancer had spared her after she underwent a mammogram in the Spanish region of Andalusia. Having now lost a breast to a mastectomy, she feels betrayed. “Why did they forget me?” rued Cano, one of hundreds of women affected by a breast cancer screening scandal in the southern region’s public health system that has shocked the country. For years follow-up tests and monitoring were not carried out after inconclusive mammograms, sparking fears that falsely reassured patients may have unknowingly developed cancer. Cano,…

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S. President Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA, react following the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 Final match. [AFP] The draw for the 2026 World Cup the biggest edition of football’s global showpiece ever held takes place in Washington on Friday with US President Donald Trump expected to feature prominently in proceedings. The expanded 48-team tournament up from the 32-nation field that competed at the 2022 Qatar World Cup will be played across the United States, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19 next year. Trump’s attendance at the Kennedy Center ceremony underscores his rapport with…

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A member of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue scans the horizon during a search in the Andaman sea area around the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, on March 17, 2014. [AFP] The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will resume at the end of December, Malaysia’s transport ministry said on Wednesday, more than a decade after the plane disappeared. The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people vanished from radar screens on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries. Two-thirds of the…

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An Israeli army vehicle fires smoke grenades during a raid in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank on December 1, 2025. [AFP] The Israeli military said Tuesday it had killed two assailants it said attacked soldiers in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, with the Palestinian Authority identifying the deceased as a 17 and 18-year-old. The army said the first attack took place Monday evening near Hebron, in the south of the Palestinian territory, where a female soldier was lightly injured in a car ramming attack. In a statement, it said that after pursuing the attacker, Israeli forces attempted…

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This grab from a handout footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry press service late on December 1, 2025, shows what is said is the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. [AFP] Ukrainian forces said Tuesday that fighting was ongoing in Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region that Moscow claimed to have captured after months of intensive fighting. The Russian defence ministry one day earlier posted a video purportedly showing Russian soldiers raising their country’s flag over a central square in Pokrovsk. “Search and assault operations and the elimination of the enemy in urban areas continue…

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In this photo illustration, ‘Oxford Word of the Year 2025’ is displayed on a mobile phone screen next to the word ‘rage bait’ in Ankara, Turkiye on December 1, 2025. [AFP] “Rage bait”, the slang term describing online content designed to elicit anger and drive internet traffic, has been crowned 2025 word of the year, Oxford University Press (OUP) announced Monday. It said the word — chosen through a combination of public voting, sentiment and analysis of OUP’s “lexical data” — had “captured our emotions” this year. Casper Grathwohl, president of OUP’s languages division, said the growing use of such…

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