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Cheng Pei-pei, an actress considered one of the first-ever woman action stars who got her start in Hong Kong's martial arts films before starring in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", has died at the age of 78, her family said Friday.

The River Seine has been clean enough to swim in for six of seven days tested ahead of the Olympic Games which get underway in a week, Paris city hall said on Friday.

US reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian penal colony on Friday for "espionage", a verdict reached after three weeks of secretive hearings condemned by Washington as a sham.

England off-spinner Shoaib Bashir took his first Test wickets on home soil as a promising morning for the West Indies in the second Test turned sour on Friday.

Scrum-half Kieran Hardy scored a try in the dying minute to salvage a 36-35 victory for Wales against the Queensland Reds on Friday and snap a long losing streak.

Yemen's Huthi rebels, who claimed a deadly strike far from their borders inside Israel early Friday, have built up a significant drone arsenal.

Airlines, banks, TV channels and other business across the globe were scrambling Friday to deal with one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.

Shane Lowry moved back into the lead of the 152nd British Open at seven under par midway through his second round as Tiger Woods looks set to miss the cut at Royal Troon on Friday.

World champion Femke Bol said on Friday she will head to the Paris Olympics in confident form, having taken inspiration from US gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

Asian and European stock markets mostly sank Friday after an outage rocked global computer systems, with sentiment also hit by US election uncertainty and Chinese economic worries.

Germany's World Cup winner Jerome Boateng on Friday won a legal odyssey against his former girlfriend who had accused him of assault, receiving only a warning from a Munich court in a retrial.

Alvaro Morata signed for AC Milan from Atletico Madrid on Friday, the Spain striker returning to Serie A days after winning Euro 2024.

Everton's potential sale to the Friedkin Group will not go ahead after the Premier League club failed to reach an agreement with the American investors.

A drone claimed by Yemen's Huthi rebels slipped through Israel's vaunted air defence system on Friday to hit a Tel Aviv building near a US embassy annex, killing a civilian.

Airlines, banks, TV channels and other business across the globe were scrambling to deal with one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years on Friday, apparently caused by an update to an antivirus program.

The European Union and Serbia signed a deal Friday for the supply of lithium batteries that are seen as a crucial building block needed to power Europe's transition to a green economy.

A knifeman who stabbed a French police officer near the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris is suspected of having killed a 16-year-old teenager earlier in the day, police sources and prosecutors said Friday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's wife Begona Gomez on Friday invoked her right to remain silent during questioning before a Madrid judge handling the preliminary corruption inquiry into her business ties.

Russia's speedy espionage trial of US reporter Evan Gershkovich looked set to deliver a verdict on Friday, after just over three weeks of closed-door court proceedings denounced by the White House as a sham.

A drone claimed by Yemen's Huthi rebels slipped through Israel's vaunted air defence system on Friday to hit a Tel Aviv building near a US embassy annex, killing one person.

Equities sank Friday as hopes for US interest rate cuts were offset by uncertainty over the US presidential election and worries about China's economy, while technical disruptions delayed London's open as a widespread outage hit global computer systems.

The European Union and Serbia were set to sign a deal Friday over the supply of battery materials during a "critical raw materials summit", just days after Belgrade allowed work to resume at a disputed lithium mining project.

A major outage wrought havoc on global computer systems on Friday, grounding flights in the United States, derailing television broadcasts in the UK and impacting telecommunications in Australia.

Police in Bangladesh's capital banned all public rallies on Friday after the deadliest day of ongoing student protests so far saw government buildings torched by demonstrators and the imposition of a nationwide internet blackout.

Japan welcomed a million more foreign visitors in the first half of 2024 compared to pre-pandemic levels, logging a new record of 17.78 million, the national tourism organisation said Friday.

A large-scale outage wrought havoc on IT systems across Australia and New Zealand on Friday, causing travel delays, hampering television broadcasts, and forcing supermarket systems offline.

Equities sank Friday as optimism over expected US interest rate cuts was offset by uncertainty about the US presidential election and a lack of economy-boosting measures from Chinese leaders after a closely watched policy meeting.

The amount of electricity produced from renewable sources worldwide is set to surpass output from coal-fired plants for the first time in 2025, the International Energy Agency said Friday.

The baby loggerhead sea turtles emerged from their eggshells and began their first challenge in life: a wobbly dash across the sand to the moonlit waters of Turkey's Mediterranean coast -- sometimes with a helping hand from volunteers.

Donald Trump predicted an "incredible victory" Thursday in accepting the Republican presidential nomination from a party euphoric over his escape from assassination and buoyed by the apparent implosion of Joe Biden's reelection campaign.

Chinese officials pledged Friday to help ease debt pressure on local governments through reforms to the tax system, after a key political gathering in the capital focused on jumpstarting the faltering economy.

Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels said they fired a drone that caused an explosion in Tel Aviv early Friday that left one person dead, injured four and set off a new shock for Israel more than nine months into its war in Gaza.