Russia will invite representatives of the Taliban to international talks on Afghanistan that it plans to host in Moscow on Oct. 20, President Vladimir Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan said on Thursday.

A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the US, calling it an “offensive deprivation” of a constitutional right by banning most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state since September.

In Nigeria, a country heavily reliant on revenues from its oil exports, entrepreneur Ifedolapo Runsewe has identified another type of black gold: used car tyres.

Australia’s prime minister on Thursday described social media as a “coward’s palace” and warned that digital platforms including Facebook should be held liable for defamatory comments posted anonymously.

Genetic traces in the body of a young woman who died 7,000 years ago furnish the first clue that mixing between early humans in Indonesia and those from faraway Siberia took place much earlier than previously thought.

Opposition lawmakers in Chile said Tuesday they will present a parliamentary charge that could lead to the removal of President Sebastian Pinera, whom the Pandora Papers investigation accused of having links to the sale of a mining company by his children’s company.

US lawmakers pounded Facebook on Tuesday, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety, and they demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media company harms children’s mental health and stokes divisions.

Austria’s ruling People’s Party (OeVP) said it had been targeted by raids from prosecutors yesterday morning, with local media reporting that offices in the chancellery were among those searched.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed yesterday appointed the former head of war-hit Tigray’s interim administration as defence minister, one of several shake-ups in his new government’s 22-member cabinet.

There’s a new addition to Greece’s postal service: a fleet of yellow robots sorting through the mail.

Germany’s Benjamin List and US-based David MacMillan yesterday won the Nobel Chemistry Prize for developing a tool to build molecules which has helped make chemistry more environmentally friendly.

Iran yesterday said that it has “serious concerns” about Israel’s presence in the Caucasus, as tensions mount between Iran and Azerbaijan over Baku’s ties with Israel, a major arms supplier.

Assailants have separately shot and killed three men in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said, blaming the rebels fighting against the Indian rule in the disputed region for the string of attacks.

Germany’s Greens and the liberal FDP party yesterday said they wanted to try to form a coalition government with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), dealing a blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

The World Health Organization yesterday endorsed the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, the first against the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children.

British justice minister Dominic Raab yesterday came under fire after saying that “misogyny is wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man”.

The European Commission will present by the end of the year new legislative proposals to tackle tax avoidance and tax evasion, the EU tax commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told the European Parliament on Wednesday.

The Nobel Prize for chemistry has been awarded to Benjamin List and David W C MacMillan.

Freedom of expression non-profit PEN America honoured three imprisoned Iranian writers on Tuesday at its annual gala that featured actors Jodie Foster and Awkwafina.

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he has spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan and they agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement, as tensions have ratcheted up between Taipei and Beijing.