BUSINESS

Asian equities rallied Thursday after US data showed inflation cooled last month, fuelling speculation that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates twice this year.

Like hundreds of other pro-Turkish fighters, Omar left northern Syria for mineral-rich Niger last year, joining Syrian mercenaries sent to the West African nation by a private Turkish military company.

A motorway attack that claimed the lives of two prison officers in France this week marks a new level of violence by the latest generation of drug traffickers, police officers and experts told AFP. On Tuesday, gunmen attacked a prison van at a motorway toll in northern France, killing two prison officers and freeing a convict linked to gangland drug killings.

A hole-in-the-wall taqueria is among the first restaurants in Mexico to be awarded a star by the prestigious Michelin Guide -- an accomplishment its owner credits to "love and effort."

Since announcing plans in late March to replace CEO Dave Calhoun at the end of 2024, Boeing's problems have seemingly gone from bad to worse, complicating an already daunting executive search.

Japan's economy suffered a worse-than-expected contraction in the first quarter, official data showed Thursday, in further bad news for its unpopular government.

Google's use of artificial intelligence to sum up answers to search queries has publishers wondering if traffic to their websites will wither.

A suspect detained for shooting Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico is a 71-year-old writer from the centre of the European nation, the interior minister said Wednesday, after media identified the man.

"Furiosa", the latest frenetically paced "Mad Max" action movie, zoomed into pole position among this year's blockbusters with a raucous world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.

The Department of Justice said that Boeing can be prosecuted for violating a 2021 criminal settlement over the certification of the 737 MAX. The DOJ determination, filed in US court in Texas on Tuesday, comes on the heels of a near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines flight in January that made an emergency landing after a panel on the fuselage blew out.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico suffered life-threatening injuries when he was shot multiple times on Wednesday.

Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico was on Wednesday shot multiple times and rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries after a cabinet meeting, officials said, in an attack condemned by EU chiefs.

Switzerland's Federal Criminal Court on Wednesday sentenced Gambian ex-interior minister Ousman Sonko to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed under the regime of former dictator Yahya Jammeh.

Ireland is certain to recognise Palestinian statehood by the end of May, the country's Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday, without specifying a date.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was trying to send a message of defiance and hope when he took to the stage of a Kyiv bar on Tuesday night for a guitar performance of "Rockin' in the Free World".

Qatar is one of the world's top LNG producers alongside the United States, Australia and Russia. Asian countries led by China, Japan and South Korea have been the main market for Qatari gas.

French police were on Wednesday hunting for a group of gunmen who killed two prison officers in an attack at a motorway toll that freed a convict linked to gangland drug killings.

The European Commission expects inflation to fall to 2.5 percent in 2024, down from a previous forecast of 2.7 percent -- news that will be welcomed by the European Central Bank (ECB).

Tens of thousands of civilians fled the southern Gaza city of Rafah ahead of a threatened Israeli ground offensive, as Palestinians on Wednesday mark the anniversary of their "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of 1948.

Baia Pataraia, the head of a leading women's rights group in Georgia, woke up last weekend to find her apartment building in the capital Tbilisi plastered with posters of her face and the words "foreign agent".

The CEO of Brazil's state oil company Petrobras has been sacked, the government announced Tuesday.

Asian markets wobbled Wednesday ahead of key US inflation data later in the day, with traders struggling to pick up the baton after a record performance on Wall Street.

OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever announced his departure Tuesday from the startup that ignited an artificial intelligence tech race with its release of ChatGPT. Sutskever said on X, formerly Twitter, that he was leaving after almost a decade at OpenAI, whose "trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous."

The government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced Tuesday that the CEO of state oil company Petrobras has been sacked.

The US Justice Department on Tuesday said Boeing can be prosecuted for two subsequent 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people approximately five years ago.

A French Jewish organisation on Tuesday condemned a "hateful rallying cry against Jews" and Paris authorities filed a criminal complaint after red hand graffiti was painted onto France's Holocaust Memorial.

The equity offering of the company was launched initially on March 28, and when the meme trade roared back to life on Monday, it ushered in some great news for the struggling theater chain, which eventually led to completion of the equity offering.

Google on Tuesday said it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.

Investigators searched three European sites belonging to American tyre giant Goodyear Tuesday, French prosecutors said, as part of an involuntary homicides probe into crashes caused by burst truck tyres.