UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres skewered oil firms on Wednesday for having "peddled the big lie" about their role in global warming, telling the World Economic Forum that they should be held accountable.. "Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie.
Nobel laureate Maria Ressa told AFP she keeps a prison "go bag", bundles of cash for bail, and runs simulations of police raids with her staff as she fights for press freedom in the Philippines.. And that's for everyone, for journalists, for business, for institutions," she told AFP in an interview.
Ukraine's interior minister was among more than a dozen people killed in a helicopter crash Wednesday near a kindergarten outside Kyiv, spurring condolences from allies.. The helicopter carrying Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky slammed down next to a kindergarten and a residential building in Brovary, a commuter town for the capital Kyiv that was the scene of fierce fighting with Russian forces last year.
The Church of England will not change its rules to allow priests to marry same-sex couples following five years of internal debate on the issue, it announced on Wednesday.. "Under the proposals, same-sex couples would still not be able to get married in a Church of England church," the church said in a statement.
Each time he boasts about the colossal relocation of his town centre in the Swedish Arctic, Kiruna mayor Gunnar Selberg gets a dressing-down from a very dissatisfied resident: his wife.. - Ghost town - Time is of the essence for Kiruna.
Nurses across England began two days of strikes over pay on Wednesday, threatening fresh disruption for patients in the creaking state-run health service, as new figures showed inflation still surging. . "Unaffordable pay hikes will mean cutting patient care and stoking the inflation that would make us all poorer," health minister Steve Barclay wrote in an op-ed Wednesday in The Independent.
Ambulance services scrambled at Sydney airport on Wednesday to meet an incoming Qantas plane that issued a mid-air mayday alert with engine trouble before landing safely.. The Boeing 737-800 plane landed without incident on the runway at Sydney airport, said an AFP reporter at the scene, and will now be inspected by engineers.
Regional airlines are struggling to ramp up flights to Hong Kong because of staff shortages at the airport, slowing the city's plan to recapture its travel hub status, industry insiders have told AFP. Hong Kong, which calls itself Asia's World City, once had one of the globe's busiest -- and best-connected -- airports. . "What an irony to say 'Hong Kong is back'," one of those interviewed told AFP. "How can Hong Kong continue to be 'Asia's World City' if everyone other than the few big companies can never come back?"
Jordanian film "Farha", vehemently criticised in Israel, is based on true events and represents "only a drop in the ocean" of Palestinian suffering, director Darin J. Sallam told AFP. Released last month on Netflix, "Farha" depicts atrocities against Palestinians during the 1948 conflict following Israel's creation, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe".. The Arabic-language film tells the story of a Palestinian teenager, Farha, whose village comes under attack by Israeli forces.
Entrepreneurial young Egyptians are helping combat their country's huge plastic waste problem by recycling junk-food wrappers, water bottles and similar garbage that usually ends up in landfills or the Nile.. - 'Good step forward' - VeryNile then compresses high-value plastic like water bottles and sends it to a recycling plant to be made into pellets.
