The US economy remains strong but a series of aggressive rate hikes meant to cool soaring inflation could eventually trigger a recession, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell cautioned Wednesday.. The ideal scenario would be for those moves to cool the economy enough to douse inflation pressures, without choking off growth -- the hoped-for "soft landing."
A powerful earthquake jolted a remote border region of Afghanistan overnight killing at least 1,000 people and injuring 1,500 more, officials said Wednesday, with the toll expected to rise as desperate rescuers dig through collapsed dwellings.. He said more than 1,500 people were injured, many critically.
Bibi Hawa's face is distorted by tears as she tries to grasp her predicament from a hospital bed in Sharan, capital of Afghanistan's Paktika province.. Mohammad Yahya Wiar, director of Sharan Hospital, says they have been doing their best to treat everyone.
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned against "expanding" military ties on Wednesday in a speech ahead of a virtual summit with top leaders from Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa.. Xi took a swipe at US and European Union sanctions on Russia in the speech on Wednesday, saying "sanctions are a boomerang and a double-edged sword".
A resurgence of Covid-19 cases in Europe, this time driven by new, fast-spreading Omicron subvariants, is once again threatening to disrupt people's summer plans.. One is declining immunity, because "the protection conferred by an infection or a vaccine dose decreases in time," he told AFP. The other came down to the new subvariants BA.4 and particularly BA.5, which are spreading more quickly because they appear to be both more contagious and better able to escape immunity.
An ancient Buddhist city carved out of immense peaks near Kabul is in danger of disappearing forever, swallowed up by a Chinese consortium exploiting one of the world's largest copper deposits.. The ruins, which cover 1,000 hectares, are perched high on a massive peak whose brown flanks betray the presence of copper.
Tucked away in Tehran's famed Grand Bazaar, Iran's oldest pistachio wholesaler quietly prepares a small revolution -- he will hand his business to his youngest daughter, in a trade dominated by men.. Competitors attest to the fact that Emami -- who took over the business from his father in 1975 -- is the oldest pistachio wholesaler in town.
The pirarucu is one impressive fish: a huge, thrashing Amazonian monster with red-and-black scales the size of serving spoons.. The traffickers allegedly use the black-market fish trade to launder drug money -- part of what the Brazilian Forum for Public Security recently called the "complex national and transnational criminal chains that operate across different economies" in the Amazon.
Australian conservationists have launched a legal bid to block a massive gas project, saying it would harm the Great Barrier Reef by warming the planet.. The proposed, Aus$16 billion ($11 billion) Scarborough project would be located off the coast of Western Australia, thousands of kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef.
Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a teenager at the Playboy Mansion almost 50 years ago, a jury in California found Tuesday, in the first civil ruling against the veteran entertainer following dozens of allegations.. California law allows adults who say they were sexually abused as minors, but have only recently become aware of the damage, to bring civil cases years after the statute of limitations would normally have expired.
