More than 1.4 million Muslims will begin the annual hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi holy city of Makkah today.

US President Donald Trump on Monday ruled out allowing Iran to enrich uranium under any nuclear deal between the foes -- as Tehran defended what it said was its “peaceful” pursuit of fuel for power generation.

Philippine medical authorities yesterday warned of a looming “public health emergency” as HIV infections have soared this year, with young males especially hard-hit.

Harvard University asked a federal judge on Monday to issue a summary judgment ruling to unfreeze $2.5 billion in funding blocked by President Donald Trump’s administration, which Harvard said was illegal.

President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will likely speak this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday, days after Trump accused China of violating an agreement to roll back tariffs and trade restrictions.

Flash flooding in north-central Nigeria last week killed more than 200 people, the Niger state humanitarian commissioner said yesterday, while hundreds more remain missing and are feared dead.

A new lady’s-slipper orchid, once believed to be extinct in the UK, has been spotted in the wild for the first time in 100 years following a decades-long conservation drive, experts said yesterday.

The Kremlin warned yesterday that work on trying to reach a settlement to end the war in Ukraine was extraordinarily complex and that it would be wrong to expect any imminent decisions.

More than 200 inmates escaped from a jail in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi late on Monday when they overpowered prison guards after being allowed to leave their cells following a series of earthquakes, local officials and police said.

The number of people who have fled Sudan since the beginning of its civil war in 2023 has surpassed four million, UN refugee agency officials said yesterday, adding that many survivors faced inadequate shelter due to funding shortages.

Asked about the statement, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry said Beijing had "no information to provide"

Nationalist opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki narrowly won Poland's presidential election, results showed on Monday, delivering a big blow to the centrist government's efforts to cement Warsaw's pro-European orientation

Cambodia will file a complaint with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over border disputes with Thailand, Prime Minister Hun Manet said yesterday, after a Cambodian soldier was killed in a recent frontier clash.

A huge plume of ash, gas and rock spewed forth yesterday from Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, but authorities said there was no current danger to the population.

A South African court yesterday opened an inquest into the murders 40 years ago of four anti-apartheid activists by a police hit squad in one of the most notorious atrocities of the apartheid era.

Gunmen killed 25 people in two attacks across north-central Nigeria’s Benue state over the weekend, local authorities told AFP yesterday, the latest violence in a region known for deadly land disputes and reprisals.

More than a million Muslim pilgrims poured into the holy city of Makkah ahead of the annual hajj, with authorities vowing to hold a safer pilgrimage amid searing desert heat and a massive crackdown on illegal visitors.

US prosecutors are investigating whether Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s companies imported Iranian liquefied petroleum gas into India through their Mundra port, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

President Emmanuel Macron’s wax figure was stolen yesterday from a Paris waxwork museum by several people claiming to be Greenpeace environmental activists, a police source told AFP.

Russia and Ukraine yesterday swapped plans for ending their three-year war during talks in Istanbul aiming to find a way out of Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.