Last year's decline was more than double the fall reported for 2022, when the country lost 850,000 people as its population shrank for the first time since 1960.

Thousands of people are still sleeping in tents in Herat province after successive earthquakes in October destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 31,000 homes.

"I expect a landslide," says Loribeth Calderwood, one of the hundreds braving the snow and the cold to make their way to a Tuesday night rally in the small town of Atkinson.

Expansion of small business ad teams at Google was expected by the company to result in increased hiring this year.

With over three years of his second and final term to run, Macron has been on the back foot in recent weeks after a series of crises and a growing challenge from the far right.

Fears of a regional escalation have spiked, with Iran and its proxies stepping up attacks across the region in solidarity with Hamas.

Qatar and France have brokered a deal with Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to deliver urgent medication to some 45 Israeli hostages held by the group in Gaza in return for humanitarian and medical aid for the most vulnerable civilians

A Greek-owned cargo ship was hit by a missile off Yemen, a maritime risk management company said yesterday, following a string of attacks in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

At least 158 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza in 24 hours, the enclave’s health ministry said yesterday, as Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of placing ‘big impediments’ to aid for Palestinians.

At least 1.4 million lives have been saved in Europe thanks to Covid vaccines, the World Health Organization said yesterday, recalling that the virus was “here to stay”.

Births in France fell last year to their lowest annual number since World War II, the national statistics bureau said yesterday. Around 678,000 babies were born in 2023, INSEE said, a drop of 6.6 percent from the previous year and the lowest number for any year since 1946.

The first refugee to be elected to New Zealand’s parliament resigned yesterday over alleged shoplifting, which she said was related to personal stress and trauma.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has said it will introduce tools to combat disinformation ahead of the dozens of elections this year in countries that are home to half the world’s population.

In a makeshift tent of cloth and plastic, Ismail Nabhan huddled by a fire with his children and grandchildren as his family, displaced by Israeli offensive in Gaza, struggled to stay warm.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised sustained US support for Ukraine in a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday, despite a row in the US Congress on approving new funding.

Donald Trump secured a resounding win in the first 2024 Republican presidential contest in Iowa on Monday, asserting his command over the party despite facing scores of criminal charges as he seeks an election rematch with President Joe Biden.

Kyrgyzstan detained at least 10 journalists linked to four different news outlets yesterday, the former Soviet republic’s second day of raids targeting independent media.

The number of adult tobacco users has dropped steadily in recent years, the World Health Organization said yesterday but it warned Big Tobacco was working hard to reverse that trend.

A Korean Air airliner “struck” an empty Cathay Pacific plane while taxiing at a snow-hit Japanese airport yesterday, with both airlines saying there were no injuries.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they attacked the spy headquarters of Israel in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, state media reported late on Monday, while the elite force said they also struck in Syria against the Islamic State.