Barrelling down a motorway south of Stockholm in a 40-tonne lorry and trailer, the driver keeps a careful eye on the road but, jarringly, no hands on the wheel.. "We take their goods from point A, drive them to point B, fully autonomously," Peter Hafmar, head of autonomous solutions at Scania, tells AFP outside the company's transport lab in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm.
Fresh clashes have broken out between police and protesters in a southern Chinese city, part of a wave of Covid lockdown-sparked demonstrations across the country that have morphed into demands for political freedoms.. But demonstrators have also demanded much wider political reforms in communist China, with some even calling for President Xi Jinping to stand down.
In Belgium's port city of Antwerp, residents live in fear of eruptions of violence between the gangs that control Europe's vast cocaine trade.. The city is the main port of entry into Europe for Latin American cocaine, a business controlled by transnational cartels with an increasing reputation for the most extreme violence.
From torture and murder in the Netherlands and Serbia to an unprecedented web of corruption in Belgium, the Sky ECC investigation has shone a light into some of Europe's darkest corners.. After English, the most common language used on Sky ECC was Albanian, investigators found.
French President Emmanuel Macron was set to meet President Joe Biden on Wednesday, at the start of a state visit highlighting the countries' strategic ties but also fears of a transatlantic trade war.. Largely due to Covid disruptions, this is the first formal state visit to the White House during the Biden presidency.
China's factory activity shrank for a second straight month in November, official data showed Wednesday, as large swathes of the country were hit by Covid-19 lockdowns and transport disruptions.. Activity fell at businesses of all sizes during the month, with the PMI for small enterprises hit hardest at 45.6.
Eighteen people go on trial in Ivory Coast on Wednesday accused of involvement in one of West Africa's bloodiest jihadist attacks -- a machine-gun assault on a beach resort in 2016 that left 19 dead.. He is described by Ivory Coast investigators as one of the instigators of the Grand-Bassam attack and by Burkina Faso as the "operation leader" in an assault on the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou in January 2016 that claimed 30 lives. bur-stb/ck/ri/jm
As Russian forces poured across Ukraine's borders, Palych knew that pain, suffering and injuries would follow in the ensuing war and his training as a paramedic would be needed.. "Even if Russian forces have indeed succeeded in taking control of settlements south of Bakhmut, these gains do not threaten the critical" supply lines into the city used by Ukraine, said The Institute for the Study of War in an assessment published this week.
With rainbow flags and "OneLove" armbands, World Cup fans have protested against host Qatar's anti-LGBTQ policies, but many queer Arabs fear a Western solidarity push could do more harm than good.. Alhussein, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said growing Western criticism of anti-LGBTQ policies in the region "has failed to produce change, and is unlikely to do so at least for the short term".
Fictional films and TV have immense power to shift attitudes on political issues, yet they remain little-used in debates over climate change.. - 'Para-social relationships' - TV has helped shift political attitudes over the years, especially around race and sexuality, from the first inter-racial kiss on "Star Trek" in the 1960s to the gay stars of 1990s sitcoms "Ellen" and "Will and Grace".
