Charities running migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean faced a pre-trial hearing in Sicily yesterday over alleged collusion with people traffickers after a controversial probe that involved mass wiretapping.

Hazel McCallion, 101, was recently reappointed to the board of Canada’s largest airport as she forges ahead with a career that has included being a city mayor for 36 years and playing professional hockey.

Russia stopped providing gas to Finland in an escalation of a row over energy payments with the West yesterday, and intensified an offensive in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule docked for the first time with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, completing a major objective in a high stakes do-over test flight into orbit without astronauts aboard.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded defeat in an election on Saturday and the opposition Labor Party was set to end almost a decade of conservative rule, possibly with the support of independents who campaigned for greener policies.

The Ukraine war can only be resolved through "diplomacy", Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday amid a deadlock in negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.

The first shipments of infant formula from Europe to address a critical shortage in the United States should begin arriving this weekend, President Joe Biden said on Friday amid criticism of his administration's handling of the issue.

The United States and South Korea expressed concern Saturday over North Korea's spiralling Covid-19 outbreak and made a fresh offer of aid, they said in a statement as US President Joe Biden visited Seoul.

Armed men have kidnapped an Italian couple and their child as well as a Togolese national in southeastern Mali, a local official and a Malian security source told AFP Friday.

Thousands of Covid-negative Beijing residents were forcibly relocated to quarantine hotels overnight due to a handful of infections, as the capital begins to take more extreme control measures resembling virus-hit Shanghai.

Russia on Saturday stopped providing natural gas to neighbouring Finland, which has angered Moscow by applying for NATO membership, after the Nordic country refused to pay supplier Gazprom in rubles.

Former media executive Indrani Mukerjea walked out of a Mumbai jail on bail yesterday, nearly seven years after being arrested for allegedly murdering her daughter.