WORLD

London, United Kingdom | AFP | Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled plans Thursday for a new fast-track visa route for “the brightest and best”, in a bid to attract the world’s top scientists to Britain after Brexit. The “shake-up” of immigration rules is aimed at encouraging elite researchers and specialists in science, engineering and technology …

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | Humanity faces increasingly painful trade-offs between food security and rising temperatures within decades unless it curbs emissions and stops unsustainable farming and deforestation, a landmark climate assessment said Thursday. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that efforts to limit global warming while feeding …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | Twenty years ago on Friday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. The departing Yeltsin was casting around for a successor and few could have …

Dhaka, Bangladesh | AFP |  Five-year-old Mohammad Ahnaf lies in a makeshift bed in the balcony of a major hospital in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, fighting for his life as dengue fever ravages his little body. But his mother Shimul Akhter knows he is one of the lucky ones as Bangladesh grapples …

El Paso, United States | AFP |  Trump consoled victims of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas on Wednesday, but despite promising a message of unity, he continued to rail at opponents while facing protests that his rhetoric on race has fueled extremism. Trump flew to El Paso, Texas, where a …

Kosice, Slovakia | AFP |  As day breaks through smudged tram windows, Slovak workers heading to the U.S. Steel Kosice plant mull their fate after hearing the company plans to sack a fifth of them. Some stare silently at the morning haze behind the chimneys of the sprawling communist-era factory. With …

Washington, United States | AFP |  There might be life on the Moon after all: thousands of virtually indestructible creatures that can withstand extreme radiation, sizzling heat, the coldest temperatures of the universe, and decades without food. These terrifying-sounding beings aren’t aliens but instead microscopic Earthlings known as tardigrades, who likely …

Saint Petersburg, Russia | AFP | When LGBT activist Yelena Grigoryeva found her name on a hit list of a “gay-hunting” group, she did not appear to take the threat seriously. The group called itself “Pila”, meaning “saw”, after the series of Hollywood horror films of the same name, in which …

London, United Kingdom | AFP | Will he, won’t he — and can he be stopped? Westminster is abuzz with talk of whether Britain’s new Prime Minister Boris Johnson will use an election to force through his Brexit plan. Many MPs are deeply opposed to his threat to take Britain out …

Beijing, China | AFP | China warned Tuesday it would take unspecified countermeasures if the United States goes ahead with plans to deploy ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region. The comments come days after US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Washington was now free to deploy the weapons following its …