AFP fact-checked the accuracy of what both contenders said on key issues:

Trump and Harris clashed over issues such as immigration, foreign policy and healthcare, but the debate was light on specific policy details.

The ambitious mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, is being carried out on a SpaceX capsule that launched early Tuesday from Florida

Canada has suspended some 30 permits for arms shipments to Israel, including a rare move against a US company's Canadian subsdiary's deal with the US government

Heading into the debate, there was a question as to how Harris and Trump, who have never met, would greet each other.

A former prosecutor, Harris, 59, appeared to get under the former president's skin with a series of sharp attacks, prompting a visibly angry Trump to deliver a stream of falsehood-filled retorts.

The United States and China held theatre-level commander talks for the first time yesterday, Chinese authorities said, amid efforts to stabilise military ties and avoid misunderstandings, especially in regional hot spots such as the South China Sea.

India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi yesterday said he did not view this year’s two-month general elections as a free exercise, but rather as one structured to deliver an advantage to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, without citing evidence.

Severe floods are expected to inundate parts of Vietnam’s north, including the capital Hanoi, government officials said, as the aftermath of typhoon Yagi, the most powerful storm to hit Asia so far this year, continues to extract a deadly toll.

Pakistani police arrested several lawmakers and leaders of ex-prime minister Imran Khan’s party in midnight raids a day after it held a major rally in the capital to demand his release, the party and police said yesterday.

Israeli strikes tore a huge crater, set tents ablaze and buried Palestinian families alive under sand in a supposedly safe zone of southern Gaza before dawn yesterday, killing or wounding scores of people, according to Palestinian officials.

India’s strife-torn northeastern state of Manipur ordered an internet blackout yesterday, after imposing a curfew following days of deadly ethnic violence and clashes between protesters and police.

Russia has received ballistic missiles from Iran and will likely use them in Ukraine within weeks, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday, warning that cooperation between Moscow and Tehran threatens wider European security.

About 60 countries including the United States endorsed a “blueprint for action” to govern responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military yesterday, but China was among those which did not support the legally non-binding document.

Australia yesterday said it planned to introduce legislation this year to ban children from using social media platforms, citing the risks it could pose to physical and mental health.

President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned the United States against trying to outgun Moscow in Asia as Russian and Chinese warships held joint drills as part of the biggest Russian naval exercises since the Soviet era.

Junior doctors in India’s West Bengal state have vowed to keep up a strike in protest at the rape and murder of a trainee doctor unless their demands are met, defying a Supreme Court deadline.

Ukraine yesterday struck the Moscow region in its biggest drone attack so far on the Russian capital, killing at least one woman, wrecking dozens of homes and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow.

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will meet in their first and perhaps only debate on Tuesday, a clash that could prove pivotal in their pitched battle for the White House.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometres (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast.