World

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen instructed their negotiators to resume trade talks on Sunday in a last ditch attempt to bridge significant differences.

Portugal will ease coronavirus rules over the Christmas period to allow people to visit loved ones but measures will be reinforced again a few days later to crack down on New Year's Eve parties, the government said on Saturday.

The day highlights how soil is fundamental natural resource and is the basis for all terrestrial life.

Four years after the United States quit UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural agency, over accusations of antiIsrael bias, diplomats say the Parisbased body has managed to put its house in order, potentially easing the way for Washington's return.

Firefighters battling a blaze in a Southern California canyon made some progress toward containment but were up against more high winds and low humidity on Friday, which threatened to stoke the flames that forced thousands to evacuate.

Members of a Dutch rightwing populist party voted overwhelmingly Friday in support of its leader who resigned last month, and then returned, amid criticism of the way he handled accusations of extreme views among some members of the party's youth wing.

Iran is raising pressure on U.S. Presidentelect Joe Biden with plans to install more advanced uraniumenriching centrifuges at an underground plant in breach of its deal with major powers, a U.N. nuclear watchdog report showed on Friday.

Thai researchers have unearthed a rare partially fossilised skeleton belonging to a Bryde's whale believed to be around 5,000 years old at an inland site west of Bangkok.

South Koreans were urged to cancel Christmas and New Year parties on Friday as daily coronavirus cases hit a ninemonth high and the government considered imposing tighter socialdistancing rules to halt a third wave of infections.

Italy approved new restrictions on Thursday to avoid a surge in novel coronavirus infections over Christmas and the New Year, banning midnight mass and halting movement between towns, as the country posted its highest daily death toll of the pandemic.

The top U.S. intelligence official stepped up President Donald Trump's harsh attacks on Beijing on Thursday by labeling China the biggest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War Two and saying it was bent on global domination.

Hundreds of Armenians blocked streets in the capital Yerevan late on Thursday and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over a ceasefire deal that locked in Azeri territorial gains in NagornoKarabakh last month.

A police union on Thursday urged prosecutors to charge a Black music producer with resisting arrest, six days after President Emmanuel Macron said the arrest and beating of the man, which was caught on film, was unacceptable and shameful for France.

A former rebel commander accused of involvement in killing civilians, rape and eating pieces of a school teacher's heart during Liberia's civil war decried his long pretrial detention in an outburst as proceedings began in Switzerland on Thursday.

Wang is a leading figure in the burgeoning world of Chinese craft beer and the Wuhan native founded one of the country's first specialised breweries, the No. 18 Brewery, in 2013.

Operations have started on the middle portion of the ChinaRussia East natural gas pipeline, allowing natural gas from the Power of Siberia system in Russia to be transmitted to the smogprone BeijingTianjinHebei region in northern China.