WORLD

Paris, France | AFP | Spitting is frowned upon in polite society — unless of course the spitter is engaged in tasting wines. “It’s by spitting out the wine that you will be even more distinguished in society,” pleads Pierre-Jules Peyrat, a Paris sommelier. Holding forth before a rapt crowd at …

Paris, France | AFP | Climate change combined with galloping tropical deforestation is cutting off wildlife from life-saving cooler climes, heightening the risk of extinction, researchers said Monday. Less than two-fifths of forests across Latin America, Asia and Africa currently allow for animals and plants to avoid potentially intolerable increases in …

Paris, France | AFP | Girls in developing countries must be protected from sexual violence in and around schools, the head of the UN’s children fund has said, urging governments to make it a top priority. Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of a G7 ministerial summit in Paris, UNICEF chief …

Paris, France | AFP | It was the biggest piece of supposed fake news before the term “fake news” was even invented. Millions of people across the world still believe that no one has ever walked on the Moon, and that the images that NASA broadcast in July 1969 were shot …

Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina | AFP |  Stranded in Bosnia, thousands of migrants face yet one more hurdle on their journey towards the European Union: the scorching summer heat in the Balkans. Under a leaden sky, Saleh Alhasan and his friends hurry to reach the shade of the woods after failing …

Mirny, Russia | AFP | Diamonds are forever, and so is the permanently frozen ground of Yakutia in north eastern Siberia, home to huge diamond deposits that ensure Russia’s supremacy in world production of the luxury stone. In the city of Mirny, the sun shines almost continuously during the region’s white …

Athens, Greece | AFP | Greek voters are casting their ballots on Sunday in the country’s first national election of the post-bailout era, with leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party expected to be ousted by the conservative opposition. Polling stations opened at 07.00 am local time (0400 GMT)and will close …

Electric scooters: not so eco-friendly after all? Paris, France | AFP |  E-scooters touted as zero-carbon urban transport are flooding city streets worldwide, but just how green they are remains an open question. The companies — from multinationals to local start-ups — distributing them insist the omnipresent two-wheel vehicles are a …

Paris, France | AFP | They appeared in June last year as Paris was waking up from its annual all-night Festival of Music: hundreds of green-and-black electric scooters dotting the pavements of the capital. The timing was perfect, with the city struggling with a botched revamp of its main bike-sharing service …

Paris, France | AFP |  Acute malnutrition, forced labour, torture: NGOs have sharpened their tone against the shocking conditions endured by refugees and migrants in Libya, where over 40 people were killed in an air strike on a detention centre. Tuesday night’s strike on the centre at Tajoura near the capital …