Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that North Korea was taking a lot of steps towards denuclearising the Korean Peninsula but Washington was not responding and was making endless demands for full disarmament instead.

Leading Brexit supporters yesterday denied reports they were manoeuvering to remove Prime Minister Theresa May -- while stepping up opposition to her plan to withdraw Britain from the EU.

The European Parliament approves a controversial EU copyright law that hands more power to news and record companies against internet giants like Google and Facebook.

The International Criminal Court yesterday said it would "continue to do its work undeterred" a day after US National Security Adviser John Bolton threatened sanctions if the tribunal investigated US activities in Afghanistan. =

Britain is failing to protect thousands of children from being trafficked and enslaved, activists said yesterday, criticising the government for lacking a clear strategy to stop girls being sexually abused and gangs using young people as drug mules.

Extreme weather events were a leading cause of global hunger rising last year, with women, babies, and old people particularly vulnerable to the worsening trend, a UN report said yesterday.

Myanmar, facing international outrage over the jailing of Reuters journalists for their reporting on a massacre of Rohingya Muslims, is conducting a "political campaign" against independent journalism, the UN said yesterday.

Russia launched what it called its largest ever military drills, with hundreds of thousands of troops taking part along with Chinese soldiers in a show of force Nato condemned as a rehearsal for "large-scale conflict."

A man being held after a knife attack that injured seven people along a canal in Paris was not under the influence of drugs at the time, a legal source told AFP yesterday.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party faces a "catastrophic split" if she persists with her proposals on Brexit, which 80 or more of her lawmakers are prepared to vote against, a former junior minister said.

Sweden faces a political impasse after its mainstream centre-left and centre-right blocs virtually tied in an election on Sunday, while the far-right - which neither wants to deal with - made gains on a hardline anti-immigration platform.

Turkish authorities yesterday detained 51 soldiers and nine others over alleged links to the US-based cleric who Ankara says orchestrated the failed coup in 2016 against President Tayyip Erdogan, Istanbul police said.

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal wraps "a suicide vest around the British constitution" and hands the detonator to the European Union, former foreign minister Boris Johnson said in comments that drew strong criticism.

United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet yesterday urged Egypt's appeals court to overturn mass death sentences handed down by a lower court after what she said was an "unfair trial".

Long awaited UN-backed talks between Yemen's warring parties sputtered out yesterday before ever truly starting, after the Huthi rebels

Russia yesterday said it had "irrefutable information" Syrian rebels were planning an imminent "provocation" in Idlib province to justify

Two Russians accused by London of trying to kill a former double agent with nerve agent posed as businessmen to obtain visas to visit Britain for the attack, a report said yesterday.

The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency yesterday raised doubts about reports of a "hunt on foreigners" by neo-Nazi mobs in a flashpoint city last month, directly contradicting Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The number of Britons who describe themselves as belonging to the Church of England has fallen to a record low with more than half now saying they have no religion, according to a survey.

A tense truce within German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative camp imploded yesterday after her hardline interior minister defended protests marred by neo-Nazi violence and blasted immigration as "the mother of all political problems".