Pope Francis will host a meeting next February of senior bishops from around the globe to discuss "the protection of minors", the Vatican announced yesterday.

The United Nations listed 38 "shameful" countries including China and Russia on Wednesday which it said had carried out reprisals or intimidation against people cooperating with it on human rights, through killings, torture and arbitrary arrests.

A Hungarian man was sentenced to life in prison yesterday after a court found him guilty of detonating a bomb in Budapest in 2016 that seriously injured two police officers.

The European Union must flex its muscles as a world power, EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday, as he spoke critically of US President Donald Trump's retreat from international engagement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that North Korea was taking a lot of steps towards denuclearising the Korean Peninsula but Washington was not responding and was making endless demands for full disarmament instead.

The European Parliament approves a controversial EU copyright law that hands more power to news and record companies against internet giants like Google and Facebook.

Myanmar, facing international outrage over the jailing of Reuters journalists for their reporting on a massacre of Rohingya Muslims, is conducting a "political campaign" against independent journalism, the UN said yesterday.

Russia launched what it called its largest ever military drills, with hundreds of thousands of troops taking part along with Chinese soldiers in a show of force Nato condemned as a rehearsal for "large-scale conflict."

A man being held after a knife attack that injured seven people along a canal in Paris was not under the influence of drugs at the time, a legal source told AFP yesterday.

The International Criminal Court yesterday said it would "continue to do its work undeterred" a day after US National Security Adviser John Bolton threatened sanctions if the tribunal investigated US activities in Afghanistan. =

Britain is failing to protect thousands of children from being trafficked and enslaved, activists said yesterday, criticising the government for lacking a clear strategy to stop girls being sexually abused and gangs using young people as drug mules.

Extreme weather events were a leading cause of global hunger rising last year, with women, babies, and old people particularly vulnerable to the worsening trend, a UN report said yesterday.

Sweden faces a political impasse after its mainstream centre-left and centre-right blocs virtually tied in an election on Sunday, while the far-right - which neither wants to deal with - made gains on a hardline anti-immigration platform.

Turkish authorities yesterday detained 51 soldiers and nine others over alleged links to the US-based cleric who Ankara says orchestrated the failed coup in 2016 against President Tayyip Erdogan, Istanbul police said.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party faces a "catastrophic split" if she persists with her proposals on Brexit, which 80 or more of her lawmakers are prepared to vote against, a former junior minister said.

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal wraps "a suicide vest around the British constitution" and hands the detonator to the European Union, former foreign minister Boris Johnson said in comments that drew strong criticism.

United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet yesterday urged Egypt's appeals court to overturn mass death sentences handed down by a lower court after what she said was an "unfair trial".

Long awaited UN-backed talks between Yemen's warring parties sputtered out yesterday before ever truly starting, after the Huthi rebels

Russia yesterday said it had "irrefutable information" Syrian rebels were planning an imminent "provocation" in Idlib province to justify

Two Russians accused by London of trying to kill a former double agent with nerve agent posed as businessmen to obtain visas to visit Britain for the attack, a report said yesterday.