The move, welcomed by UN, will allow thousands of people living in camps to support themselves and their families Thailand is setting a regional precedent this month by giving refugees permission to work in the country in an effort to tackle aid cuts and its own labour shortages. More than 87,000 refugees living in nine … Read more
Sanae Takaichi has made history but will have little time to settle in before negotiating the pitfalls of rising prices, power struggles and a mercurial US president It is hard to overstate the symbolism of Sanae Takaichi’s achievement in becoming the first female prime minister of Japan, a country that consistently ranks poorly in global … Read more
Photographers capture extremely unusual phenomenon – also known as red sprites – against backdrop of the Milky Way A trio of photographers in New Zealand have captured images of “red sprites”, or red lightning, one of the rarest light phenomena in the world, in which luminous crimson flashes appear in the sky. New Zealand photographer … Read more
Teachers, nurses and public service staff among those walking off job and also pressing for more government investment in health and education An estimated 100,000 nurses, teachers and public sector staff walked off the job in New Zealand on Thursday to call on the government to better fund and resource public services, in one of … Read more
Lindsay Sandiford, 68, has been on death row in Indonesia since 2012, after authorities found 3.8kg of cocaine in her suitcase A British woman will avoid execution for drug smuggling in Indonesia under an agreement between the two nations to repatriate her and another Briton serving a life sentence. Lindsay Sandiford, 68, has been imprisoned … Read more
The Hyunmoo-5 ‘bunker buster’ missile can reportedly carry an eight-tonne warhead and will be ready for deployment at the end of the year South Korea has said it will begin deploying its largest ballistic missile yet at the end of the year – a projectile known as the “monster missile” by local media – marking … Read more
Typhoon Rai killed more than 400, displaced nearly 3.2 million, and destroyed more than a million homes in 2021 Trixy Elle still weeps when she remembers how she and her family fought for their lives as Typhoon Rai tore across the Philippines days before Christmas four years ago. In a matter of hours, intense rain … Read more
Around the Cook Islands, the world’s two most powerful countries are exploring the possibility of deep-sea mining for critical minerals Deep below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, the seafloor is dotted with clusters of brown and black rocks, each containing valuable metals. The rocks, known as polymetallic nodules, hold reserves of critical minerals that … Read more
Officials say they have no evidence man had committed a crime, after Trump called people on submarine ‘terrorists’ CIA playing ‘most important part’ in US strikes in the Caribbean, sources say Ecuador has released a man who survived a US strike on a suspected drug-trafficking submarine, after finding no evidence that he had committed a … Read more
Legal teams are midway through a hearing over whether one vote truly swayed a federal election in a Montreal suburb The case of a single vote which determined the outcome of a federal election in Canada risks sending the “disastrous message” to voters that “some votes count more than others”, says the lawyer of a … Read more