Germany’s new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has pledged to work with international partners to help avert in Afghanistan what she called “the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our time”.

President Vladimir Putin said that Washington’s willingness to discuss Russia’s security proposals to curb Nato’s eastward expansion was “positive”, as fears mount in the West over a major military escalation in Ukraine.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday said that Washington grew “arrogant and self-confident” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the expansion of the Nato military alliance.

The head of Poland’s ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski yesterday said that Germany was trying to turn the European Union into a federal “German Fourth Reich”.

A Moscow court slapped Google with an unprecedented hefty fine of nearly $100 million yesterday as Russia ramps up its pressure on foreign tech giants.

Two patients died yesterday after a fire broke out in an intensive care unit of an infectious diseases hospital, typically used to treat Covid patients, in Astrakhan in southern Russia.

More than a dozen Western powers on Thursday expressed anger that Russian mercenaries working for the controversial Wagner group have started to deploy in Mali, accusing Moscow of providing material backing for the fighters.

Temperatures have soared in Greenland recently, the Danish Meteorological Institute said on Wednesday, in line with warming trends experts have linked to global warming.

Russia wants to avoid conflict with Ukraine and the West, President Vladimir Putin said yesterday, demanding an “immediate” response from the US and its allies to Moscow’s demand for security guarantees.

AstraZeneca Plc said on Tuesday it is working with Oxford University to produce a vaccine for the Omicron coronavirus variant, joining other

A massive search and rescue operation was underway off the Greek island of Folegandros yesterday, after a dinghy carrying migrants sank, killing at least one person, Greek authorities said.

Russia on Monday expelled two German diplomats in response to a spat with Berlin over a German court’s ruling that Moscow had ordered the 2019 assassination of an ex-Chechen commander in a Berlin park.

President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned that Russia was prepared to take “military-technical measures” in response to “unfriendly” Western actions over the Ukraine conflict, in a sharp escalation of rhetoric.

Britain reported a surge in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant which government advisors said could be just the tip of the iceberg, and London’s mayor declared a “major incident” to help the city’s hospitals cope.

Hundreds of dinosaur footprints, so well-preserved that even the scaly skin can be seen, have been found in Poland, giving an insight into a complex ecosystem around 200 million years ago, geologists said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was left reeling yesterday after his Brexit minister resigned, ending a difficult week during which his Conservative party suffered a humiliating defeat in a local by-election and his own MPs rebelled over new coronavirus curbs.

Al 128 miners were evacuated from a Siberian coal mine on Sunday after fire sensors were triggered, Russia's emergencies ministry said, just weeks after a blast at a mine in the same region killed 51 people.

The Netherlands yesterday became the latest country to announce stricter measures as Europe braced for more curbs to rein in the spread of the new strain of the coronavirus fuelling a resurgence in Covid-19 cases worldwide.

Countries taking part in UN talks on autonomous weapons stopped short of launching negotiations on an international treaty to govern their use, instead agreeing merely to continue discussions.

Western powers on Friday reported some progress in talks to save the landmark Iran nuclear deal, but European diplomats warned that they were “rapidly reaching the end of the road”.