A giant African pouched rat called Magawa who spent years sniffing out landmines in the Cambodian countryside has stopped working and will enjoy a well-earned retirement eating bananas and peanuts, his employers told AFP.

Facebook on Friday banned former US president Donald Trump for two years, saying he deserved the maximum punishment for violating platform rules over a deadly attack by his supporters on the US Capitol.

At least 20 people were killed by Myanmar’s security forces in the Ayeyarwady river delta region yesterday after villagers armed with catapults and crossbows fought back against troops searching for weapons, local media and residents said.

Nigeria’s government said on Friday it was suspending Twitter’s operations indefinitely, two days after the social media giant deleted a tweet from

The administration of President Joe Biden on Friday announced it would restore protections under the Endangered Species Act, a law credited with

A US judge overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons Friday in a move swiftly condemned by the state’s

Before he was killed, Khet Thi’s poems railed eloquently against Myanmar’s sudden coup, joining a deluge of protest verse celebrating democracy demonstrators and defying the military’s brutal war on words. As soldiers unleashed a violent crackdown on resistance to the army takeover, he implored the public to stand firm against what he saw as an existential threat to the country’s future. “We have to fight to win this battle,” he wrote. “If we lose: North Korea. If we win: South Korea.” Last month, scores of police and soldiers surrounded the home he shared with his wife and family in the central city of Shwebo. They accused the poet -- who baked cakes and made ice cream to support his family -- of planning a series of bomb blasts, and demanded he give himself up. The next day his wife Chaw Su was summoned to a hospital in Monywa around 80 kilometres away. “I thought I would able to (bring) him some clothes,” she told AFP. But there was no need, according to a police officer, who told Chaw Su her husband was dead. “I got only the dead body back,” she told AFP. Myanmar has been in uproar since the February coup ended a 10-year experiment with democracy that had loosened the fetters of censorship and allowed for greater self-expression. As some protesters picked up hunting rifles and slingshots, poets like Khet Thi joined a fight against the coup staged by a population unwilling to surrender hard-won democratic freedoms. Along with violence in the streets, the junta has tried to stifle dissent with internet blackouts and by rounding up celebrities and civil servants who have called for rebellion. A video uploaded to Facebook soon in the weeks after the putsch showed a collage of defiant protesters reciting poems against the military. “With what conscience can you go to work while everyone goes out and protests?” asked one man, referring to a mass strike campaign launched to pressure the junta. Poetry played a prominent role in Burma’s struggle for independence against colonial power Britain and the decades of military rule that followed, when scores of writers were locked up as political prisoners. UK-based poet Ko Ko Thett believes the medium has struck a chord with ordinary people “overwhelmed with rage, disbelief and grief” at the junta’s takeover. He put his own writing on the back burner in order to concentrate on translating works by fellow poets writing from post-coup Myanmar -- some of whom, like Khet Thi, have since been killed. Many have mobilised online in their battle against the junta, including an underground collective of 30 bards from across the country spreading their verse on Facebook. “There is so much crime against humanity (in Myanmar). Poets in such situations live with tears in every single breath,” one poet, who asked to remain anonymous for security concerns, told AFP. “Our poems are hordes of screaming children.”

The first cruise ship to leave Venice since coronavirus restrictions were eased set sail on Saturday, but some local residents protested over the return to normal, unhappy about the passage of giant liners through the historic lagoon city.

Thousands of Hungarians, some of them holding banners declaring "Treason", protested on Saturday against a Chinese university's plans to open a campus in Budapest.

Two people were killed and 12 were missing after two separate accidents at coal mines in China, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday.

Egypt has sent a convoy of engineers and building equipment to Gaza to begin reconstruction in the Palestinian enclave after the recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Egyptian state television reported on Friday.

The death toll from the worst militant attack in Burkina Faso in recent years has risen to 132, the government said on Saturday, after armed assailants laid siege overnight to a village in the jihadist-plagued northeast.

A U.S. federal judge overturned California's 32-year-old ban on assault weapons on Friday, describing it as a "failed experiment" and prompting scathing criticism from the state's governor and attorney general.

A Turkish air strike killed at least three people and injured others on Saturday at a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq housing thousands of Kurdish refugees from Turkey, said Rashad Kelani, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party official.

India's capital city is preparing to deal with a coronavirus infection peak of 37,000 cases a day in future, its chief minister said on Saturday as he also announced a partial easing of a lockdown.

At least 20 people were killed by Myanmar's security forces in the Ayeyarwady river delta region on Saturday after villagers armed with catapults and crossbows fought back against troops searching for weapons, local media and residents said.

India’s government on Saturday warned Twitter to immediately comply with the country’s new social media regulations, which critics say give the government more power to police online content.

COP26 President-Designate Alok Sharma has highlighted the importance of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, saying that it plays a significant role as a carbon sink.

When Nepal witnessed the peak of a devastating second wave of the pandemic last month with people dying from a lack of oxygen and almost every second test returning positive, the world’s eyes turned to the country.

Nigeria said on Friday it had indefinitely suspended Twitter's activities, two days after the social media giant removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.