The UN Human Rights Council has recognised access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right, formally adding its weight to the global fight against climate change and its devastating consequences.

A populist billionaire prime minister at odds with the European Union who featured in the Pandora Papers was tipped to win a tight two-day Czech general election wrapping up on Saturday.

France will launch a campaign for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty as part of its upcoming presidency of the European Union, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday.

Journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia yesterday won the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for freedom of expression at a time when democracy is increasingly under threat.

Only a third of the funds urgently sought for Afghanistan by the United Nations have been disbursed, the UN refugees chief said yesterday, warning of a potential humanitarian catastrophe.

Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, journalists from the Philippines and Russia respectively, have received congratulations from around the world on winning the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to protect freedom of expression.

The United Nations human rights office yesterday said it is concerned the military in Myanmar could be preparing an imminent attack aimed at its opponents amid a build-up of heavy weapons and troops in areas of the country where the internet has also been shut down.

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, 72, won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee,” the award-giving body said yesterday.

Russia will invite representatives of the Taliban to international talks on Afghanistan that it plans to host in Moscow on Oct. 20, President Vladimir Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan said on Thursday.

1912 - Montenegro declared war on Turkey, beginning the First Balkan War.

A vicious cycle linking the depletion of natural resources with violent conflict may have gone past the point of no return in parts of the world and is likely to be exacerbated by climate change, a report said yesterday.

British justice minister Dominic Raab yesterday came under fire after saying that “misogyny is wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man”.

Austria’s ruling People’s Party (OeVP) said it had been targeted by raids from prosecutors yesterday morning, with local media reporting that offices in the chancellery were among those searched.

Germany’s Benjamin List and US-based David MacMillan yesterday won the Nobel Chemistry Prize for developing a tool to build molecules which has helped make chemistry more environmentally friendly.

Assailants have separately shot and killed three men in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said, blaming the rebels fighting against the Indian rule in the disputed region for the string of attacks.

Germany’s Greens and the liberal FDP party yesterday said they wanted to try to form a coalition government with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), dealing a blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

The World Health Organization yesterday endorsed the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, the first against the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children.

The European Commission will present by the end of the year new legislative proposals to tackle tax avoidance and tax evasion, the EU tax commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told the European Parliament on Wednesday.

An updated draft of a global corporate tax overhaul has dropped “at least” from a proposed minimum rate of “at least 15 percent”, possibly clearing a major hurdle for Ireland as negotiations enter a final stretch, sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters.

Russia yesterday recorded its highest daily coronavirus death toll as cases linked to the Delta variant spike amid a lacklustre vaccination drive and few anti-virus restrictions.