Urdu, spoken by many millions today, has a rich past that reflects how cultures melded to forge India's complex history. But its literature has been subsumed by the cultural domination of Hindi, struggling against false perceptions that its elegant Perso-Arabic script makes it a foreign import and a language of Muslims in the Hindu-majority nation.

The narrow streets of Urdu Bazaar, in the shadow of the 400-year-old Jama Masjid mosque, were once the core of the city's Urdu literary community, a centre of printing, publishing and writing. Today, streets once crowded with Urdu bookstores abuzz with scholars debating literature are now thick with the aroma of sizzling kebabs from the restaurants that have replaced them. Only half a dozen bookstores are left.

Urdu, one of the 22 languages enshrined under India's constitution, is the mother tongue of at least 50 million people in the world's most populous country. Millions more speak it, as well as in neighbouring Pakistan. But while Urdu is largely understood by speakers of India's most popular language Hindi, their scripts are entirely different.

Urdu has faced challenges in being viewed as connected to Islamic culture, a popular perception that has grown since the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in 2014.

Sellers first set up stores in the Urdu Bazaar in the 1920s, selling stacks of books from literature to religion, politics and history -- as well as texts in Arabic and Persian. By the 1980s, more lucrative fast-food restaurants slowly moved in, but the trade dropped dramatically in the past decade, with more than a dozen bookshops shutting down.

On Thursday, the Biden administration said that around 8,000 North Korean soldiers are now in Russia's Kursk region near the border with Ukraine and are preparing to support Russian forces in the coming days.

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The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded on Tuesday that Russian authorities have committed torture as a crime against humanity in Ukraine.

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Historians in China need to play a dual role. Not only do they contribute to the advancement of knowledge, but they also need to actively defend their country’s national interests in the South China Sea. According to a report by the South China Morning Post, Chinese scholars gathered at the end of June were urged to “give a forceful response to false narratives” to strengthen their nation’s claims in the South China Sea.

At the seminar held in Hainan Province, China, Wu Shicun, founder of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, emphasised the critical importance of “narrative construction and discourse building” for China. He said that the strategy would effectively defend the nation’s rights and interests in the South China Sea.

China asserts its claim to more than three million square kilometres of the Sea through the “nine-dash line” concept – contrary to international law. History has become a battleground in the dispute waters. Beijing has sought to draw upon the Western Han dynasty (200BCE to 9CE) to illustrate that China has historically fished in the waters for thousands of years. Yet a 2016 international tribunal decision on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea did not concur, concluding that there was no legal basis for China’s historic rights claim.

[...]

Propaganda based on China’s history may also be directed at individuals who are not Chinese citizens. It is reasonable to anticipate that China’s interpretation of the South China Sea history will be taught in mainland China’s universities, where international students are pursuing their degrees. China may also choose to communicate this interpretation to the international community through public diplomacy channels that it has established globally.

[...]

Voters are choosing between pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu and challenger Alexandr Stoianoglo, who favours closer ties with Russia.

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Two Lebanese military officials confirmed that a naval force landed in Batroun, about 30 kilometres north of the capital Beirut, and abducted a Lebanese citizen.

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Internet monitoring organization NetBlocks reported Thursday that Mozambique has implemented restrictions on social media and messaging platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, amid escalating tensions following disputed presidential election results. The restrictions follow earlier mobile data disruptions that occurred on October 25, after election results were announced.

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Three military units in Chapare province were "assaulted by irregular groups" on Friday, with the assailants "taking more than 200 military personnel hostage" from three barracks, the ministry said. "They seized weapons and ammunition," it added.

Backers of Morales, the country's first Indigenous leader, began blocking roads three weeks ago to prevent his arrest on what he calls trumped-up charges aimed at thwarting his political comeback.

Morales, after first threatening a hunger strike unless the government agreed to negotiations, later urged his supporters to consider suspending the roadblocks to "avoid bloodshed." Morales, 65, was in office from 2006 to 2019, when he resigned under a cloud after elections marked by fraud.

Despite being barred from running again, Morales wants to challenge President Luis Arce, his former ally, for the nomination of the left-wing MAS party in elections next August. Days after he led a march of thousands of mainly Indigenous Bolivians on the capital La Paz to protest Arce's policies, prosecutors announced Morales was under investigation for statutory rape, human trafficking and human smuggling over his alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 2015. Morales has called the accusations "a lie."

Morales's supporters initially demanded an end to what they called his "judicial persecution." But the protest movement has snowballed into a wider anti-government revolt marked by calls for Arce to resign.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said "warm, moist air... was causing heavy rainfall with thunderstorms in western Japan" partly due to Kong-rey, which was downgraded to an extratropical low-pressure system from a typhoon.

The city of Matsuyama "issued the top-level warning, urging 189,552 residents in its 10 districts to evacuate and immediately secure safety", a city official told AFP.

While the evacuation was not mandatory, Japan's highest-level warning is typically issued when it is extremely likely that some kind of disaster has already occurred.

Due to rain, Shinkansen bullet trains were briefly suspended between Tokyo and southern Fukuoka region in the morning before resuming on a delayed schedule.

Kong-rey smashed into Taiwan on Thursday as one of the biggest storms to hit the island in decades. It claimed at least three lives and injured 690 people, according to the National Fire Agency, which added a migrant worker death to the toll on Saturday. The storm knocked out power to 957,061 households, 27,781 of which were still in the dark as of Saturday.

Representatives of Indigenous peoples, many in traditional dress and headgear, broke out in cheers and chants as 196 countries agreed on a "subsidiary body" dedicated to "matters of relevance to Indigenous peoples and local communities."

It was the first major breakthrough for the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN's Convention on Biodiversity

"This is an unprecedented moment in the history of multilateral agreements on the environment," an overjoyed Camila Romero, an Indigenous representative from Chile

"Parties have recognized the constant need for our full and effective participation, our knowledge and innovations, technology and traditional practices," she added.

The explosive growth of generative artificial intelligence, which creates content like text, images, audio and synthetic data, is expected to add millions of metric tonnes of electronic waste annually by the end of the decade, a study in Nature Computational Science has said.

This rise in e-waste is due to the rapid expansion of AI applications and data centres, which demand frequent upgrades of high-performance computing hardware. Short life cycles for advanced processors and storage equipment mean devices are replaced often to meet rising demand, resulting in a surge of discarded electronics.

Generative AI models, such as large language models, are highly resource-intensive, requiring powerful servers, processors and storage solutions to operate effectively. As big-tech companies race to develop more sophisticated models and hardware, e-waste from discarded equipment is piling up. At the current adoption rate, e-waste from generative AI could reach between 1.2 and 5 million metric tonnes annually by 2030 – a thousand-fold increase over today’s levels.

Reducing e-waste generated by artificial intelligence is not without its challenges. Data security is a major barrier, as companies often destroy used devices to protect sensitive information. Secure data erasure technology could allow for safe reuse without compromising privacy. Recycling also remains expensive due to the cost of safely handling hazardous materials, even though recycled metals hold significant economic value.

The Global E-Waste Monitor estimates that only 22 percent of electronic trash is formally recycled, with much of it ending up in informal recycling systems in lower-income countries, where safe processing methods are usually unavailable.

The allegations follow the airing of a BBC documentary in September that detailed multiple claims of rape and sexual assault by the former owner of the upmarket London department store. The Justice for Harrods Survivors group said it had received 421 inquiries, mainly related to the store but also regarding Fulham football club, the Ritz Hotel in Paris and other entities.

The billionaire Egyptian businessman -- who died in August last year aged 94 -- bought Harrods in 1985, six years after acquiring the Ritz in the French capital. He bought Fulham in 1997.

Harrods has said that it has been contacted by more than 250 people seeking to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. London's Metropolitan Police force says it has been contacted by 60 people, with accusations stretching back to 1979.

The attacks are said to have lasted for more than 30 years, until 2013.

The concept brings back the joy of browsing real books to communities where many bookstores have shut, and gives readers more eclectic choices than those suggested by algorithms on online sellers, its proponents say.

"Here, you find books which make you wonder who on earth would buy them," laughs Shogo Imamura, 40, who opened one such store in Tokyo's bookstore district of Kanda Jimbocho in April. "Regular bookstores sell books that are popular based on sales statistics while excluding books that don't sell well," Imamura, who also writes novels about warring samurai in Japan's feudal era, told AFP. "We ignore such principles. Or capitalism in other words," he said. "I want to reconstruct bookstores."

The hundreds of different shelf renters, who pay 4,850-9,350 yen ($32-$61) per month, vary from individuals to an IT company to a construction firm to small publishers.

A quarter of Japan's municipalities have no physical bookstores, with more than 600 shutting in the 18 months to March, according to the Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture.

Imamura in 2022 visited dozens of bookstores that have managed to survive the tough competition with e-commerce giants like Amazon, some by adding cafes or even gyms.

Japan' industry ministry in March launched a project team to study how to support bookstores. "Bookstores are a hub of culture transmission, and are extremely important assets for the society in maintaining diverse ideas and influencing national power," it said.

"The current number of bodies recovered is 12," Ivica Dacic told public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia, revising upwards an earlier toll of eight dead and warning of other likely fatalities. "This number will not be final," the minister added.

"The operation is still ongoing and extremely challenging. Over 80 rescuers are involved, with the assistance of heavy machinery," Dacic said Friday afternoon.

The Blood Transfusion Institute in Novi Sad also called on residents to donate blood following the accident.

Serving Serbia's second-largest city, the station reopened in July after three years of renovation work. Construction was still ongoing in parts of the station.

Serbia's Prime Minister Milos Vucevic vowed that authorities would investigate the cause of the accident.

Serbia Railways said in a statement that the collapsed roof had not been part of the renovations completed at the station. "Serbia Railways regrets the accident that occurred, and the causes and any new details from the investigation will be promptly announced," the company wrote in a social media post.

The move comes after students at several French universities have, like some of their peers in the United States, protested or held sit-ins demanding a ceasefire in Gaza over the past year. The Political Studies Institute in the eastern city of Strasbourg cut ties with the Reichman University near Tel Aviv in June, local newspaper Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace reported on Wednesday.

The institute's director Jean-Philippe Heurtin told AFP he had been strongly opposed, but members of the university board -- which includes students -- approved it in a vote.

France's Higher Education Minister Patrick Hetzel on X on Wednesday said he "deplored the decision" taken by the French university board.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in a June opinion article in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper criticised the Reichman University for giving an honorary doctorate to a military commander. The man had shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian who had hurled a rock but "posed no threat" to him in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2015, Levy wrote. The case was brought up during the debate over whether to cut ties in Strasbourg.

The academic boycott of Israel is part of the Palestinian-led "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS) campaign, which says that Israeli universities are "developing weapon systems and military doctrines" used in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel and its key backer the United States have regularly accused the BDS movement of "anti-Semitism", charges its co-founder Omar Barghouti has denied.

According to a UN report released on Wednesday, 1,223 people were killed and 522 injured as a result of gang violence and the fight against gangs. "This represents a 32 percent drop in killings and injuries compared with the first quarter, but an increase of 27 percent compared with the second quarter," it said. Almost half of the deaths were attributed to gangs, but some 45 percent were reportedly the result of law enforcement operations.

The report also highlighted a 40 percent increase in the number of acts of violence committed by self-defence groups or unorganised members of the population, known as the "Bwa Kale" vigilante movement. They made up some 8 percent of the overall killings. At "least 122 individuals – either presumed gang members or accused of common crimes, including animal or telephone theft – were killed with extreme brutality by the population," the report stated. "During these incidents, victims were mutilated with machetes, stoned, decapitated, burned alive or buried alive," it continued.

The report also said 170 people were kidnapped during those months and the persistent use of sexual violence against women and girls continues.

South Africa says Israel has refused to comply. “Israel’s continued shredding of international law has imperiled the institutions of global governance that were established to hold all states accountable,” the president’s statement said.

Palestine, Spain, Chile and seven other countries have petitioned the court to join the case.

In a move that has sparked diplomatic tensions and opposition street protests, Mexico is set to become the world's only country to allow voters to choose all judges, at every level, starting next year. The eight justices -- including president Norma Pina -- declined to stand for election in June 2025, a statement said, adding that one of the resignations would take effect in November and the rest next August.

Former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who enacted the reforms in September before leaving office, argued the changes were needed to clean up a "rotten" judiciary serving the interests of the political and economic elite.

Critics fear that elected judges could be swayed by politics and vulnerable to pressure from powerful drug cartels that regularly use bribery and intimidation to influence officials.

Sheinbaum, a close ally of Lopez Obrador who became Mexico's first woman president on October 1, strongly supported the judicial reforms.

“AFTER 970 days of war,” said Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, visiting Kyiv on October 21st, “Putin has not achieved one single strategic objective.” In public, Mr Austin offered certitude, confidence and clarity: “Moscow will never prevail in Ukraine.” In private, his colleagues in the Pentagon, Western officials and many Ukrainian commanders are increasingly concerned about the direction of the war and Ukraine’s ability to hold back Russian advances over the next six months.

According to the government and local sources, an attack by the jihadist group Boko Haram on the Chadian army killed around 40 people overnight Sunday near the Nigerian border.

A vast expanse of water and swamps, Lake Chad's countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa, who make regular attacks on the countries' army and civilians. Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead and displacing two million, and the organisation has since spread to neighbouring countries.

In June, the International Office for Migration recorded more than 220,000 people displaced by attacks from armed groups in Lake Chad province. Chad is an important ally for French and US forces aiming to fight jihadists in the Sahel, which has become the epicentre of global terrorism under attack by factions loyal to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have ended military operations with the US and France in recent years and have turned to Russia for support instead.

A woman’s voice is considered awrah, meaning that which must be covered, and shouldn’t be heard in public, even by other women

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The remains of the town, dubbed al-Natah, were long concealed by the walled oasis of Khaybar, a green and fertile speck surrounded by desert in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula. Then an ancient 14.5 kilometre-long wall was discovered at the site, according to research led by French archaeologist Guillaume Charloux published earlier this year.

The large town, which was home to up to 500 residents, was built around 2,400 BC during the early Bronze Age, the researchers said. It was abandoned around a thousand years later. "No one knows why," Charloux said. When al-Natah was built, cities were flourishing in the Levant region along the Mediterranean Sea from present-day Syria to Jordan.

Black volcanic rocks called basalt concealed the walls of al-Natah so well that it "protected the site from illegal excavations", Charloux said. But observing the site from above revealed potential paths and the foundations of houses, suggesting where the archaeologists needed to dig. They discovered foundations "strong enough to easily support at least one- or two-storey" homes, Charloux said, emphasising that there was much more work to be done to understand the site.

Al-Natah was still small compared to cities in Mesopotamia or Egypt during the period. But in these vast expanses of desert, it appears there was "another path towards urbanisation" than such city-states, one "more modest, much slower, and quite specific to the northwest of Arabia", Charloux said.

Members of the persecuted minority risk their lives each year on long and dangerous sea journeys, often crowding into rickety boats in the hopes of reaching Malaysia or Indonesia. The refugees were abandoned before dawn on Thursday around 100 metres off a beach in Aceh Province, Saiful Anwar, a village official in East Aceh, told AFP. The group included 46 women, 37 men and seven children, he said, while locals found two bodies on the shore and four floating in the sea.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it knew about the arrivals but could offer no further information. Acting Aceh Governor Safrizal, who goes by one name, told reporters "human trafficking mafia activity" was to blame for the latest arrivals.

Every year, thousands of Rohingya attempt the perilous 4,000-kilometre journey (2,500 miles) from Bangladesh to Malaysia, fuelling a multi-million dollar human-smuggling operation that often involves stopovers in Indonesia.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention and says it cannot be compelled to take in the refugees, calling instead on neighbouring countries to share the burden.

Seoul had warned a day earlier that the nuclear-armed North was preparing to test-fire another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or even conduct a nuclear test ahead of next week's US elections. The launch came just hours after US and South Korean defence chiefs called on Pyongyang to withdraw its troops from Russia, warning that North Korean soldiers in Russian uniforms were being deployed for possible action against Ukraine.

Developing advanced solid-fuel missiles -- which are quicker to launch and harder to detect and destroy in advance -- has long been a goal for Kim.

North Korea defended the sanctions-busting launch, calling it "an appropriate military action that fully meets the purpose of informing the rivals... of our counteraction will," the official Korean Central News Agency reported Kim as saying.

Tokyo said that the "ICBM-class" missile had flown for longer than any other previously tested by the North, being airborne for about 86 minutes and hitting altitudes of 7,000 kilometres.

North Korea's missile launch "seems to have been carried out to divert attention from international criticism of its troop deployment," Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.