Fifty years on from an invasion that carved the island of Cyprus in two, many residents, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, still hope for a solution. Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004 still a divided island, while the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus remains isolated internationally, recognised only by Turkey.

Braving loneliness and unfamiliar cities, young Chinese professionals are flocking to alternative career options. Their choices reflect broader changes in the world’s second-largest economy after decades of breakneck growth.

High in the Indian Himalayas, the Brokpa people fear for their way of life as modernity catches up to the isolated community living on disputed lands. Brokpa people recount myths of ancestral links to Alexander the Great’s army, who invaded in the fourth century BC, and ancient Rome.

Hanging from a rope and bamboo ladder off a Himalayan mountain cliff, skilled Nepali climbers gather highly prized hallucinogenic honey — an ancient tradition stung by environmental degradation and rapid climate change.

A Xinhua reporter has recently experienced the driverless taxi service in Shanghai, following the city’s issuance of its initial batch of demonstration application licenses for autonomous intelligent connected vehicles

For decades, Priozersk was a secret city, unmarked on maps and closed to the outside world, owing to nearby Soviet era military test sites. Now, authorities and residents want to turn their home into a tourist hotspot on the shore of central Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash.

A Barbie that spent six months orbiting the Earth is to go on public display for the first time in London, part of a new exhibition tracing the doll’s evolution as it marks its 65th anniversary.

It looks a little like an evil robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind. Starting this month, the machine with a crude head and light-up eyes mounted on a truck — which can drive on rails — will be put to use for maintenance on the firm’s network.

At an indoor skatepark in central Bangkok, 12-year-old Vareeraya Sukasem gazes down the concrete ramp and in one smooth swift motion, propels her pink skateboard towards her target -– a steel handrail. The young Thai skateboarder, who will be one of the youngest athletes t

Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa visits the headquarters of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre in Phnom Penh, where she announces that the two countries will work together to help remove landmines in Ukraine. Cambodia was riddled with millions of mines during nearly three decades of conflict and is regarded as a world leader in the removal.

Crowds bop to bass-heavy electronic music at a weekend party in Shanghai that brings together deaf and hearing clubbers, with staff taking food and drink orders through sign language. It’s the second “BassBath” club night organised by a culture-bridging group working in the Chinese metropolis.

At her peaceful home in rural South Korea, Seen Aromi practices yoga, sleeps in as long as she wants and encourages her more than 200,000 YouTube followers to not feel guilty for enjoying single life.

“Our country needs a bigger reset”, says Keir Starmer as he gives his first speech as UK prime minister outside Downing Street. The Labour party leader oversaw a landslide victory in a general election, ending 14 years of rule by Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

The UK’s exit from the European Union dominated the country’s 2019 general election, with promises of lower immigration and a stronger economy sweeping the Conservatives to a landslide win. But five years later Brexit is barely being mentioned on the campaign trail ahead of July 4 elections – with “leave” supporters voicing disappointment over broken pledges with immigration at record highs and businesses pointing to the financial fall-out.

In the shade of an almond tree, Zubayda Pardayeva begins the age-old process of turning cocoons into silk that Uzbekistan wants to overhaul. The silk industry — an ancestral tradition in the Central Asian country which is the world’s third biggest producer — is state-controlled and unprofitable, but President Shavkat Mirziyoyev wants to make the silk sector one of the country’s major employers by 2027.

Mount Fuji’s summer climbing season begins with new crowd control measures on the Japanese volcano’s most popular hiking trail to combat overtourism.

Heaving with bratwurst and meaty delicacies, Vienna’s popular sausage stands are a popular cultural landmark, so much so that the owners of 15 stands are applying for Vienna sausage stand culture to be recognised as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. “We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” says 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — the Austrian capital’s oldest operating sausage stand.

Meet Alessandro Martini, an Italian vlogger and avid Hanfu lover! He was recently stylishly sporting traditional Chinese clothing at Milan’s famous Duomo Cathedral. 

Far from Parisian bistros where Burgundy snails are usually served, one Japanese man has figured out how to farm the slimy species — a feat that has long eluded the French. Toshihide Takase, 76, says he is “the only person in the world” breeding this specific delicacy.

Robots are making coffee, playing football and gesturing like humans at the World Intelligence Expo in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin, as companies and engineers show off their high-tech robotics to a sea of curious visitors.

Tens of thousands of people gather at Stonehenge, the renowned prehistoric UNESCO world heritage site in southwest England, to celebrate the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice at dawn on 21 June 2024. The Neolithic monument, which is thought to have been erected around 2,500 BC, aligns with the rising sun on the morning of the summer solstice, which has drawn revellers to celebrate since prehistoric times.

Far from the gleaming high-rises of India’s financial capital Mumbai, impoverished villages in areas supplying the megacity’s water are running dry — a crisis repeated across the country that experts say foreshadows terrifying problems.

More than twenty years after building her first bee colonies, Magda Miloseska still visits the hives with the same passion. Tending the bees behind her house near Tetovo, western North Macedonia, Miloseska has seen first-hand the harmful effects of climate change on her honey harvests, with warm winters and sudden changes in temperature creating conditions favourable to parasites and the development of disease.

After years of charming millions of people around the world with their furry bodies and clumsy antics, foreign-born giant pandas are adapting to new lives in China.

The fluffy envoys are loaned to overseas zoos as part of Beijing’s “panda diplomacy”, with the offspring returned to China within a few years of their birth to join breeding programmes.

In a small laboratory in Seoul, a team of South Korean scientists are injecting cultured beef cells into individual grains of rice, in a process they hope could revolutionise how the world eats.

Through efforts spanning several decades, Zhongwei in China’s Ningxia, has achieved significant progress in desert control. The city has also leveraged its remaining desert to develop industries.

Rifda Irfanaluthfi is the first Indonesian gymnast to qualify for the Olympics, let alone the first woman, and her mind is set on reaching Paris fully fit so she can etch her name into gymnastics legend at home.

Down a Tokyo street lined with bright signs, up narrow stairs and behind a windowless door is a “snack bar” long cherished by regulars but hidden from tourists — until now. 

Muslim worshippers flock to the Grand Mosque in Islam’s holiest city of Mecca to circle the Kaaba ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage. Saudi Arabia said the hajj will start on 14 June after astronomical observatories spotted the crescent moon Thursday evening, signalling the beginning of the month in which the annual pilgrimage falls.

Adoring fans throng Tokyo-born giant panda Xiang Xiang’s enclosure as she celebrates her seventh birthday months after returning to China from Ueno Zoo. 

The Darkness Fighters are Hong Kong’s only team that pairs visually impaired people with sighted volunteers to compete in the annual Dragon Boat Festival. The team was founded in 2018 and today has around 50 members, many of them retirees, with varying levels of eyesight and physical fitness.

Footage released by Chinese drone maker DJI shows it has completed the world’s first successful drone delivery tests on Mount Everest, Nepal. The heavy drone carried oxygen bottles and food from Everest base camp to Camp 1.

Panamanian Alberto Lopez prepares breakfast in ankle-deep water. The day begins rainy, and his home on the tiny island of Carti Sugdupu in the Indigenous Caribbean region of Guna Yala is flooded.

A group of South Korean activists, the “Fighters For Free North Korea”, send balloons loaded with anti-Kim Jong Un leaflets and K-pop music into North Korea, after Pyongyang sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons south last week.

Many young doctors in Ireland are leaving the country in search of better lifestyles. Skewed work-life balance, housing and cost of living crises are some of the issues young doctors face in Ireland.

People in New Delhi react as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wins a third term, despite his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failing to secure an outright majority for the first time since sweeping to power a decade ago.

A Chinese probe carrying samples from the far side of the Moon has started its journey back to Earth, according to the country’s space agency. Material collected from the far side may shed light on how the Moon formed in the first place.

Tens of thousands of people pack the streets in central Bangkok for the annual Pride celebrations during which Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said that the “government and public sectors will work together to legalise same-sex marriage successfully”. 

At a factory in Finland, the “farmers of the future” are making food protein by feeding a microbe nothing but air and electricity, proving that protein can be produced away from traditional agriculture.

Donald Trump on Thursday became the first former US president ever convicted of a crime after a New York jury found him guilty on all charges in his hush money case, months before an election that could see him yet return to the White House.

AFP spoke to young people across the European Union to hear what will be influencing their vote in the upcoming European Parliament election that will take place from 6-9 June.

Thousands of people in Indonesia release lanterns to mark Vesak Day commemorating the birth birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha Siddhartha Gautama.