Parliaments in Canada and the Netherlands drew rebukes from Beijing after they passed non-binding motions in February that said the treatment of China's Uighur Muslim minority constituted genocide.

Ardern told state broadcaster TVNZ in an interview that initial country-to-country negotiations had turned to state-by-state discussions as the process was taking too long.

Unrelenting rains over the past three days swelled rivers in Australia's most populous state of New South Wales (NSW), causing widespread damage and triggering calls for mass evacuations.

The note of optimism comes even as several European countries have started reimposing restrictions as they contend with surging coronavirus infections, and after mixed messaging on the safety of a key jab.

The killings followed a year of mounting anti-Asian violence in the United States, which community leaders say is due to Asian Americans being blamed for the coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.

The top Chinese and U.S. diplomats, in their first meeting of Joe Biden's presidency on Thursday and Friday, publicly rebuked each other's policies at the start of what Washington called "tough and direct" talks in Alaska.

US President Joe Biden on Friday denounced the upsurge of violence against Asian-Americans, telling a community plunged into grief after this week's Atlanta murders that the nation must not be complicit in the face of racism and xenophobia.

A white man kills eight people in the US city of Atlanta, including six Asian women. Police say he told them he was not driven by race, but was eliminating "temptation" for a "sex addiction." So what category of hate does his crime fall into?

Delegation officials told broadcaster CCTV that the Chinese "came with sincerity" to the talks, held in the city of Anchorage, having made preparations in line with prior arrangements.

Amanda Garcia struggles to hold back her tears. After 30 days on the road, waiting in this Texas border town for a bus to Dallas, she is just hours from her goal -- a better life in the United States.

While citing an easing of the strain on the nation's medical system as a reason for lifting a state of emergency in the Tokyo region on Sunday, Suga has apparently judged that the emergency has lost its edge and the number of infections is unlikely to fall even if the government maintains it.

China's actions "threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the opening of the two-day meeting in Anchorage.

The shooting rampage in Atlanta by a 21-year-old white man that left six women of Asian origin dead has laid bare the fears of an Asian-American community on edge over a spike in hate crimes because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday mocked Joe Biden for calling him a "killer" -- saying "it takes one to know one" -- as ties between Moscow and Washington sank to new lows.

An independent study into child sex abuse in Germany's Roman Catholic Church published Thursday revealed hundreds of alleged cases and led to the resignation of the archbishop of Hamburg.

Clinton, who had a warm rapport with Putin's mentor Boris Yeltsin, found him cold but wrote in his memoirs that "Yeltsin had picked a successor who had the skills and capacity... to manage Russia's turbulent political and economic life better than (the ailing) Yeltsin now could."

The "mechanical failure" hit the service from New Delhi to Tanakpur, Uttarakhand state, after the driver slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting an animal on the tracks, the NDTV channel reported.

Images of army trucks transporting piled-up coffins out of the Italian town of Bergamo last year provided a shocking testament to the horrors of coronavirus. One year on, the memories are still raw.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who died Wednesday aged 61, was once hailed for his no-nonsense attitude, but his swing to authoritarianism stifled democracy and allowed Covid-19 to run rampant.

Mexican and foreign companies are lining up for a share of what experts say is likely to become one of the world's biggest legal marijuana markets, worth billions of dollars.

In speeches, policy documents, and other communications, senior leaders including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have regularly adopted the phrase in a break from the "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

The American former president's conservative base was avidly pro-Israel and Trump fulfilled a wishlist for the hawkish Netanyahu. 

Austin and Blinken arrived in South Korea earlier in the day, embarking on a two-day visit to their country's key ally in the Northeast Asia region. They each held their first in-person talks with South Korean Defense Minister Suh Wook and Foreign Minister Chung Eui Yong.

Tyler Bayless, 35, told Reuters that he spent several months living in an Atlanta halfway house for recovering addicts with Robert Aaron Long, 21, who was charged on Wednesday with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in the Tuesday night shootings.

The WHO, Europe's medicines regulator and AstraZeneca itself have repeatedly said the vaccine was safe after several countries reported feared links with blood clots or brain haemorrhages. 

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy went on trial Wednesday over claims of illicit financing for his failed 2012 re-election bid, just two weeks after a landmark conviction for corruption.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he will take the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca after a number of European countries halted their rollout of the jab over safety fears.

A man told a Vatican court on Wednesday how a former papal altar boy sexually abused him over a period of six years while both were teens attending a pre-seminary.

Violence against people of Asian descent "must end," former US president Barack Obama said Wednesday after a series of shootings in the Atlanta area left six Asian women dead.

The South is the second leg of the US officials' inaugural overseas trip, and like their first stop, Japan, a leading security ally of the United States.