Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday signed a deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that included a mutual defence pledge, one of Russia’s most significant moves in Asia for years that Kim said amounted to an “alliance”.

Russian forces have escalated attacks near Toretsk, a frontline town in eastern Ukraine that has remained relatively calm over recent months of fighting, officials said yesterday.

Eleven migrants died and 64 were missing on Monday after two shipwrecks off southern Italy, according to a German charity, the Italian coast guard and United Nations agencies

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first time in 24 years, the two countries said, underscoring Moscow's burgeoning partnership with the nuclear-armed state since the invasion of Ukraine

France’s left put up a united front yesterday, vowing a “total break” with President Emmanuel Macron’s policies if it wins historic polls, while far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen pledged a “national unity government” if her party emerges victorious.

The Conservative party of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has fallen behind the hard-right anti-immigration Reform UK party for the first time in a poll by YouGov, which called the development a “seismic shift”.

G7 leaders meeting in Italy yesterday hardened their tone against China, warning Beijing to stop sending weapons components to Russia and play by the rules on trade, according to a draft summit statement.

President Vladimir Putin said yesterday Russia would end the war in Ukraine only if Kyiv agreed to drop its Nato ambitions and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow, demands Kyiv swiftly rejected as tantamount to surrender.

Nato countries have “comfortably exceeded” a target of placing 300,000 troops on high-readiness as the alliance grapples with the threat from Russia, a senior alliance official said yesterday.

Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies yesterday agreed an outline deal to provide $50 billion of loans for Ukraine using interest from Russian sovereign assets frozen after Moscow launched its invasion of its neighbour in 2022.

US President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement yesterday aimed at bolstering Ukraine’s defence against Russian invaders and getting Ukraine closer to NATO membership.

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities have destroyed half of its electricity generation capacity since winter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday.

Cases of dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases are rising significantly in Europe as climate change creates warmer conditions that help invasive mosquitos spread, the EU's health agency warned on Tuesday

The snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron after Sunday’s bruising loss to the far-right in European Parliament elections will be France’s most fateful legislative vote in decades, its finance minister said yesterday.

While the centre, liberal and Socialist parties were set to retain a majority in the 720-seat parliament, the vote dealt a domestic blow to the leaders of both France and Germany, raising questions about how the European Union's major powers can drive policy in the bloc

It might have been the longest wait but on Saturday 100-year-old American World War II veteran Harold Terens married his 96-year-old fiancee in Normandy, just days after being honoured on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in northwestern France.

Britain’s foreign minister David Cameron has been the victim of a hoax video call from someone claiming to be the former president of Ukraine, officials said.

Each of the past 12 months ranked as the warmest on record in year-on-year comparisons, the EU’s climate change monitoring service said yesterday, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert “climate hell”.

A small, seemingly unremarkable fern that only grows on a remote Pacific island was crowned the Guinness World Record holder for having the largest genome of any organism on Earth.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday hailed a US decision to partially lift restrictions on using US-donated weapons to strike inside Russia as a “step forward”.