More diversity would strengthen the World Trade Organization, a WTO leadership candidate said, suggesting that placing an African or a woman such as herself at the top could send a "very powerful message". Amina Mohamed of Kenya, one of eight candidates vying to become the WTO's next director-general, said the organisation, as it battles with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, would benefi...

BRUSSELS (AFP) --NATO on Friday called for an international probe into the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and demanded Moscow reveal its Novichok nerve agent programme to the global chemical weapons watchdog. After an emergency meeting of NATO's ruling council, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said all countries were united in condemning the "horrific" attack on Navalny. G...

PARIS (AFP) - Neymar was one of three Paris Saint-Germain stars to have contracted the coronavirus, a well-placed source told AFP on Wednesday, after the Champions League runners-up announced several positive tests. "Three Paris Saint-Germain players have confirmed positive Sars CoV2 tests and are subject to the appropriate health protocol," PSG said in a statement. "All of the players and coac...

WASHINGTON -- The United States is getting ready to start distributing its first new coronavirus vaccine just before the presidential election, a news report said Wednesday, raising questions over the viability of what it said may be a politically-motivated target date. The report from California-based publishing firm McClatchy said the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC...

BEIJING (AFP) -- Tens of thousands of people in an ethnic Mongolian region of northern China have joined rare protests and school boycotts against a new curriculum they fear will wipe out their minority culture, residents said Tuesday. The sudden policy change in Inner Mongolia means all ethnic minority schools in the remote region will now be required to teach core subjects in Mandarin rather t...

GENEVA (AP) -- The United Nations weather agency says this summer will go down for leaving a "deep wound" in the cryosphere -- the planet's frozen parts -- amid a heat wave in the Arctic, shrinking sea ice and the collapse of a leading Canadian ice shelf. The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as the global average, provoking w...

TOKYP (AP) -- With Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announcing his plans to step down due to health reasons, members of his ruling party are furiously maneuvering ahead of an internal vote that will ultimately decide his successor. Executives of Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party met Tuesday and decided that the Sept. 14 vote for party leader -- and with it almost assuredly prime minister -- will be...

TOKYO (Reuters) -- Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga will join the race to succeed his boss Shinzo Abe as prime minister, local media said on Sunday, as the competition heats up to succeed Japan’s longest-serving leader. Suga, a longtime lieutenant of Abe’s in a key supporting role, had denied interest in the top job but attracted attention with a series of interviews, to Reuters an...

KENOSHA (AP) -- With chants of "One person, one vote!" and "No justice, no peace!" a crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside a Wisconsin courthouse Saturday to denounce police violence and share messages of change, a week after an officer shot Jacob Blake in the back and left the 29-year-old Black man paralyzed. The diverse group of protesters also chanted "Seven bullets, seven days!...

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- US President Donald Trump will travel next week to the Midwestern city where African American Jacob Blake was shot multiple times in the back by a white policeman, sparking a nationwide wave of protest. Trump will meet police in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday and "survey damage from recent riots" triggered by Blake's shooting last weekend, White House spokesman Judd Deere said...

Japan's longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said Friday he intends to step down because a chronic health problem has resurfaced. He told reporters that it was "gut wrenching" to leave so many of his goals unfinished. Abe has had ulcerative colitis since he was a teenager and has said the condition was controlled with treatment. Concerns about Abe's health began this summer and grew this ...

CHARIKAR (AFP) -- Rescue workers were searching Thursday for bodies in the debris of collapsed houses after flash floods fuelled by torrential rains killed at least 162 people in Afghanistan. At least 100 people died in the city of Charikar north of Kabul when flooding overnight on Tuesday caused hundreds of buildings to collapse. Abdul Ghayor, a labourer who was working in the capital, said he...

MOSCOW (AFP) -- Russian police announced on Thursday they had begun a preliminary examination of opposition leader Alexei Navalny's illness after the Kremlin dismissed German doctors' findings that he was apparently poisoned. Transport police in Siberia said they have started "a pre-investigation check" into what led to Navalny's hospitalisation in the city of Omsk to establish "all the circumst...

ROME (AFP) -- China's foreign minister on Tuesday kicked off a tour of a Europe still reeling from coronavirus, as he seeks to shore up economic and diplomatic relations in light of tensions with the US. Donald Trump's administration has stepped up anti-China rhetoric in the run-up to the US presidential election on November 3, despite ongoing trade talks. On his first European stop in Rome, Wa...

More than one-third of children and adolescents across the United States eat fast-food each day, according to new figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2018, 36 percent of young people ate fast food every day, an increase from 34 percent of in 2011, researchers said. Up to 14 percent of young people obtained 25 percent to 45 percent of their daily calories from f...