Yuya Motomura, a mahjong parlour manager in Japan, had always wanted a way to prove himself to a society he felt looked down on him.. "I've always felt that I'm someone who is more socially conscious than other people realise," he told AFP as he prepared to leave Japan for the conflict.
Russia's bid to build a new embassy near Australia's parliament suffered a legal blow on Monday, when the country's highest court denied a request for temporary protection against eviction.. Australia's high court ruled on Monday morning that Russia had to temporarily vacate the site until the case returns to court for more detailed legal arguments, local media reported.
The Wagner mercenary group's mutiny has weakened President Vladimir Putin and could affect the course of the war in Ukraine, analysts say.. But Moscow insisted that the mutiny would not affect its operations in Ukraine.
Knackered after covering a stunning march on Moscow by a small army of mercenaries?. An armed rebellion by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had vowed on Friday to topple the Russian military leadership and begun a march on Moscow, sparked the country's largest political crisis in decades and prompted many newsrooms to work around the clock.
Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in rebel-held northwest Syria on Sunday, the deadliest attack on the country this year, a war monitor said.. "These Russian strikes are the deadliest in Syria this year and amount to a massacre," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Fighting on Sunday between rival Sudanese generals in Darfur killed at least a dozen civilians, said a doctor in the devastated region.. Speaking from the capital of South Darfur state, the doctor said fighting there had led to "a provisional toll of 12 civilians killed in Nyala".
Vote counting was underway in Sierra Leone on Sunday, the electoral commission said, as the opposition claimed a lack of transparency following fiercely fought general elections a day earlier.. He said at a press conference Sunday that it had been "one of the best election days" in recent history, "if not the best".
Russia's crisis involving a mercenary group's aborted revolt against the Kremlin exposed "real cracks" in President Vladimir Putin's rule, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday.. The remarks were the first public declarations about the crisis by the United States, which over the past 24 hours had been intensively engaged in consultations with European allies on the revolt.
Al-Shabaab jihadists have killed five civilians, some by beheading, in eastern Kenya, a witness and a police source told AFP on Sunday.. Based in Kenya's eastern neighbour Somalia, the Al-Shabaab group has been waging a bloody jihadist insurgency against the fragile government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.
Turkish activists on Sunday defied a ban to stage an annual gay pride march in Istanbul one month after Turkey's election followed a homophobic hate-filled campaign. . This year's pride march started and finished earlier than expected without any street clashes or police violence, according to AFP journalists on the ground.
