French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday defeated his rival Marine Le Pen in presidential elections, projections showed, prompting a wave of relief in Europe that the far-right had been prevented from taking power.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized a foreign vessel smuggling fuel in the Gulf and arrested its crew members, state media said yesterday, in the third such incident reported this month.

Israeli forces yesterday said they had arrested 12 people across the occupied West Bank over the weekend in connection with a spate of deadly attacks inside the Jewish state.

Russia’s defence ministry said yesterday its high-precision missiles struck nine Ukrainian military targets overnight, including four arms depots in the Kharkiv region where artillery weapons were stored.

An explosion at an illegal oil refinery in southern Nigeria has killed at least 80 people, the emergency services said yesterday.

The death toll from several migrant shipwrecks off the Tunisian coast has risen to 17 people, a judicial official said yesterday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said yesterday that Israel was “committed” to the status quo at the flashpoint Jerusalem holy site at the heart of a recent wave of violence.

Women and children sheltering in a giant steel works in Mariupol that is the last holdout of Ukrainian defenders of the southern port city, said in a video released on Saturday they are desperate to get out and are running out of food.

French voters headed to the polls yesterday for the presidential run-off between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his challenger Marine Le Pen, after a fractious campaign that has seen the far right come its closest yet to winning power.

The French voted on Sunday in an election that will decide whether pro-European Union, centrist President Emmanuel Macron keeps his job or is unseated by far-right eurosceptic Marine Le Pen in what would amount to a political earthquake.

The United States' top diplomat and defence chief were Sunday set to make their first wartime visits to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago, with fierce battles raging in the east of the country.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday criticized a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv.

A gunman opened fire on random victims from a sniper's nest in an apartment building near an elite prep school in the nation's capital on Friday, wounding four people, before taking his own life as police closed in, officials said.

“Fierce battles” raged in eastern Ukraine yesterday all but killing hopes of an Easter truce as officials said they would make a fresh attempt to evacuate civilians from the war-torn city of Mariupol.

Israel yesterday said it will close its only crossing from the Gaza Strip for workers in response to overnight rocket fire, stopping short of conducting retaliatory strikes in an apparent bid to ease tensions.

France yesterday prepared to choose between centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen to rule the country for the next five years after a bitterly contested and polarising election campaign.

Rio de Janeiro’s carnival, a glittering, sequin-studded festival, exploded back to life Friday with the first famed samba school parades since Covid-19 hit Brazil.

The US stands alongside Bangladeshis of all faiths who came together to reject attacks against the minority communities, said US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain.

Russia said on Saturday it plans to deploy its newly tested Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of mounting nuclear strikes against the United States, by autumn.

An explosion at an illegal oil refining depot in Nigeria's Rivers state killed over 100 people overnight, a local government official and the NGO Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC) said on Saturday.