An unemployed local has confessed to killing a 57-year-old Swiss tourist while trying to rob her of $12. Her death has rocked the reopened tourist island.

As the Taliban attempt to create an air of inevitability and the US military campaign mostly finished, the public relations war in Afghanistan has taken on outsize importance.

About 400 so-called grassroots associations were tapped to play a key role in Hong Kong’s elections after Beijing overhauled the system to ensure that only “patriots” could run the territory.

The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors

Greg Abbott’s pose didn’t escape the attention of critics on Twitter who made comparisons to the Roman emperor Nero remembered for his indifference to the Republic’s suffering.

The politically popular bill has survived largely because most of the key Republican senators involved in negotiating it are not operating under his influence.

Before analysis showed missile silos being built in western China, US-based analysts warned of lasers based in Xinjiang that could blind or disable orbiting satellites.

It was the latest in a string of provincial capital to largely succumb to Taliban fighters in less than a week, as US forces complete their pullout.

The idea of the study is to determine how to safely reopen nightclubs without anyone getting infected.

The woman who filed a criminal complaint against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo alleging he engaged in illegal sexual conduct has come forward publicly.

Fuelled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation, the Dixie Fire has grown to become one of the largest wildfires in California’s history.

Europe is declaring its steady immunisation strategy a success as public confidence and incentives push a surge in vaccine numbers.

Nobody was talking about critical race theory two years ago, but in the wake of the George Floyd protests, it has become the latest moral panic in schools.

The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors

New coronavirus variants are to be named after star constellations when all the letters in the Greek alphabet are used, a senior World Health Organisation official has said.

Within days of the comments, Alabama threw out more than 65,000 expired coronavirus vaccines despite the state’s low rate of immunisation.

Tree projects helping companies such as BP and Microsoft reach climate targets have been hit by the massive blazes up the west coast of the US.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are making hearts flutter with a sweet new photo of their daughter Princess Charlotte.

The raid on the school in the north-eastern town in April 2014 in which hundreds of schoolgirls were kidnapped sparked an international outcry and a viral campaign on social media.

The US is now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day, returning to a milestone last seen during the winter surge in another bleak reminder of how quickly the delta variant has spread through the country.

Two Myanmar citizens have been arrested in the US and charged with conspiring with a Thai arms dealer to oust the opponent to the junta by tampering with his car.

The White House said the Taliban’s actions would not win the group the international legitimacy it seeks.

The Italian ‘Green Pass’ is one of the toughest COVID-free passport in Europe, required to eat indoors, see tourist sites, travel locally and soon even to teach.

“The bleeding was stopped before it even began,” said a happy Taiwanese official, as export orders soared in the wake of the Chinese ban on the fruit.

Rising Delta infections compelled the Obamas to scale back lavish plans for the former president’s 60th - and many of his old staffers did not make the cut.

The space agency is looking for fit young scientists, engineers and pilots to live in Mars Dune Alpha, a red planet habitat built inside a Houston studio.

The woman, whose name has not been made public, was an executive assistant who told state investigators that in one incident Andrew Cuomo groped her breast.

The regional vaccine leader is preparing to establish quarantine-free corridors for fully inoculated passengers as it approaches coverage of 80 per cent of its population.

Hezbollah said the attack with dozens of rockets was in response to Israeli air strikes on Thursday.

China’s Foreign Ministry said Biden’s asylum offer “slandered and smeared Hong Kong’s national security law...and blatantly trampled on international law”.

Residents told reporters they had begged Ethiopian soldiers to stay and protect them “or at least give us their Kalashnikovs, but they refused”.

After one activist was hanged and another hijacked, Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya wants dissidents trained in spycraft for self-protection.

There are some unusual duties linked to the role at The INNformer, a small independent newspaper in rural West Virginia, including manning the desk of a small Victorian hotel.

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Facebook said the ad data tool used by researchers violated its privacy standards by scraping data from the site without authorisation.

In a reference to expanding its power and influence, Ebrahim Raisi said Iran would stand by people “wherever there is oppression and crime in the world”.

“The world needs to learn how to co-exist with this virus,” wrote a prominent Shanghai doctor about the recent outbreak.

The man who wants to replace the Japanese PM next month says no amount of Olympic gold would compensate for “putting the lives of the Japanese people” at risk. 

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found.

The new Moderna data comes from the company’s roughly 30,000-participant clinical trial used to support the vaccine’s emergency authorisation.

Fifty years ago, fierce controversy raged in Britain following the jail sentences imposed on the three editors of “Oz” magazine, convicted on obscenity charges.

The overnight airstrikes were a marked escalation at a politically sensitive time.

Thousands of residents of the town of Greenville had evacuated earlier under a warning from authorities that they were in imminent danger.

The rest of the military is being called on to cease invasive “two finger” examinations after the Army indicated it would abandon the decades-long practice.

The public register reveals Scott Morrison joined numerous other world leaders in giving former president Donald Trump a picture of himself.

In the last two weeks, fires in Turkey have burnt more than three times the area affected in an average year, while Greeks have been forced to evacuate beaches.

The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors.

On the Greek island of Evia, coast guard vessels helped with evacuations, where residents escaping fires had fled to a beach for safety.

Public health experts have stressed, repeatedly, that the unequal distribution of doses is not only unethical, but could extend the pandemic.

Many hope the traditional greeting, known as la bise, is in permanent demise and will never be revived even as the threat of COVID recedes.