The death of Mikhail Gorbachev triggered an outpouring of tributes from Western leaders yesterday but reaction was muted in Russia, where many blamed the last Soviet leader for the loss of the country’s status as a global superpower.

A months-long political crisis in Iraq showed little sign of abating yesterday despite a fresh push for negotiations after nearly 24 hours of deadly violence between rival Shia factions ended.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, hospital officials in Moscow said.

A senior World Health Organization director has been placed on leave, a spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday, following staff accusations of bullying and other complaints.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who as the last leader of the Soviet Union waged a losing battle to salvage a crumbling empire but produced extraordinary reforms that led to the end of the Cold War, has died at 91, Russian media reported Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Russian troops to flee for their lives after his forces launched an offensive to retake southern Ukraine, but Moscow said it had halted the attack in its tracks and inflicted heavy losses on Kyiv.

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison for social media posts, a rights group said, in the latest example of a crackdown on women activists that followed a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden to the kingdom.

About 43 percent of American citizens believe a civil war could happen in the US within the decade, according to a new survey conducted by YouGov and the Economist.

The last of his people, a Brazilian indigenous man known only as "the man of the hole" has been found dead, decades after the rest of his uncontacted tribe were killed off by ranchers and illegal miners, officials said.

An influential Shiite cleric announced Monday that he would resign from Iraqi politics, prompting hundreds of his angry followers to storm the government palace and sparking clashes with security forces. At least 15 protesters were killed.

Ukraine yesterday announced the start of a long-awaited counter-offensive to retake territory in the south seized by Russian forces since their invasion six months ago, a move reflecting Kyiv’s growing confidence as Western military aid flows in.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has fathered 10 children, said yesterday the world needs to “make more babies” -- and keep digging for oil.

Police in the US city of Detroit on Sunday caught a suspect believed to have shot four people at “random”, killing three of them, authorities said.

Sparks flew Sunday as far-right President Jair Bolsonaro accused leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of massive corruption -- and drew accusations of “destroying Brazil” in return -- as they faced off in their first election debate.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday pledged emphatic backing for Ukraine and other hopefuls to join the European Union, underlining however that enlarging the bloc to “30 or 36” would require reforms.

The Iranian president yesterday said reviving a 2015 deal with world powers will be pointless unless the UN nuclear watchdog puts an end to its probe of undeclared sites in the country.

An engine problem yesterday forced Nasa to postpone for at least four days the debut launch of the colossal rocketship it hopes will one day fly astronauts back to the Moon, more than a half-century after Apollo’s last lunar mission.

A 75-year-old Austrian citizen of Iranian origin, jailed in Iran on charges of espionage, has been given a five-day release from prison, his daughter told AFP yesterday.

Russia said Monday it will launch sweeping military drills in the country’s east that will involve forces from China — a show of increasingly close defense ties between Moscow and Beijing amid tensions with the West over the Kremlin’s action in Ukraine.

Europe could face several winters of gas shortage as a result of the cuts to Russian supplies, Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said.