Southern European countries yesterday braced for a punishing weekend heatwave, with temperatures predicted to hit up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and beyond, prompting health warnings for residents and tourists plus fears of wildfires.

For US President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin is a man looking for an off-ramp to his bloody three-year assault on Ukraine.

Scientists have found a way to use the bacteria E.Coli to convert plastic waste into a popular painkiller, a study said Monday, though outside experts doubted the technique would make a dent in the fight against plastic pollution.

Waves of Russian drones and missiles in and around Kyiv overnight killed 10 people including one child, lit up the night sky with fires in residential areas and damaged the entrance to a metro station bomb shelter, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.

In a bid to defuse the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, foreign ministers from Europe’s top three powers hurried to meet their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva.

Pro-Palestinian activists broke into a Royal Air Force base in central England yesterday, damaging and spraying red paint over two planes used for refuelling and transportation.

Pope Leo XIV yesterday warned of the potential consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) on the intellectual development of young people, saying it could damage their grip on reality.

A species of Australian moth travels up to a thousand kilometres every summer using the stars to navigate, scientists said Wednesday, the first time this talent has been discovered in an invertebrate covering vast distances.

The UK yesterday tightened its sanctions on Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, imposing bans on 20 more ships and blacklisting 10 other people or bodies involved in energy and shipping.

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday criticised US President Donald Trump for his threats to take over Greenland, saying that was “not what allies do”, as he arrived in the Danish autonomous territory for a visit.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been stripped of his Legion of Honour -- the country’s highest distinction -- following a conviction for graft, according to a decree published yesterday.

Global heating persisted as the new norm, with last month the second warmest May on record on land and in the oceans, according to the European Union’s climate monitoring service.

Britain’s most hazardous building threatens to leak radioactive water until the 2050s unless the clean-up of a former nuclear power plant is quickened, UK lawmakers warned yesterday.

The European Union is on track to reach its 2030 climate targets, Brussels said yesterday, but uncertainty remains over the bloc’s ambitions to cut greenhouse gas emissions much further by 2040.

Scientists announced Tuesday they have discovered the earliest evidence of humans using whale bones, finding weapons made from the remains of the massive mammals dating back more than 20,000 years.

A German woman accused of a mass stabbing attack that wounded 18 people at a train station in Hamburg suffers from mental illness, police said yesterday.

Rising seas will severely test humanity’s resilience in the second half of the 21st century and beyond, even if nations defy the odds and cap global warming at the ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius target, researchers said yesterday.

Russia’s prosecutor general said yesterday it had banned human rights group Amnesty International Limited as an “undesirable organisation”, accusing it of backing Ukraine against Russia.

The first direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in more than three years lasted well under two hours, with no apparent sign of progress so far in narrowing the gap between the sides, and a Ukrainian source called Moscow’s demands “non-starters”.

More than 295 million people faced acute hunger last year, a new high driven by conflict as well as other crises -- and the outlook is “bleak” for 2025 as humanitarian aid falters, a UN-backed report said yesterday.