A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent and beyond: Esa Alexander / Reuters A reveller sees the bright side of life at the Cape Town Pride celebration in South Africa on Saturday. Luc Gnago / Reuters Four-year-old Maëlis Kouakou dresses up for Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, in Abidjan, Ivory … Read more
Mark Savage Music Correspondent BBC Remember Monday are seasoned live performers, with perfect three-part harmonies The UK’s Eurovision entry for 2025 will be the female country-pop trio Remember Monday, the BBC has announced. The group, who previously reached the quarter-finals of The Voice, will head to Switzerland this May with a song called What The … Read more
After years of wrangling with authorities, students in Thailand can now let their hair down. Literally. On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court annulled a 50-year-old directive by the education ministry, which had previously set out rules on hairstyles for school students: short hair for boys and ear-length bobs for girls. In practice, hairstyle rules have … Read more
French police closed train traffic to and from Paris Gare du Nord station on Friday after an unexploded World War II bomb was found on tracks leading to the terminal, train companies reported. The bomb was found on the tracks during overnight works, train line RER B posted on X. Media said the discovery was … Read more
Adam Mandeville BBC News NI BBC Yousaf Ghaffar said he has been given a chance to live a “relatively normal life” A County Mayo man who was paralysed in a car crash has been given a chance to live a “relatively normal life” thanks to what surgeons are calling ground-breaking surgery. Yousaf Ghaffar was told … Read more
News 1 Han Dong-Hoon was once regarded as the South Korean president’s right-hand man Han Dong-Hoon was driving home from dinner in Seoul on December 3, scanning the radio, when he heard a breaking news update: President Yoon Suk-Yeol was preparing to deliver an emergency address. Han, then the leader of Yoon’s People’s Power Party … Read more
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a strategic reserve for Bitcoin, making the US one of the few countries in the world to create a national stockpile of blockchain assets. The reserve will hold cryptocurrency forfeited to the federal government as part of criminal or civil proceedings, White House AI and … Read more
Adnan Syed, whose criminal conviction was made famous in the hit true-crime podcast Serial, will not have to serve any additional jail time after being resentenced in the murder of his ex-girlfriend. A Baltimore judge ruled that Syed “is not a danger to the public”, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News, and that … Read more
The US owner of high street chemist Boots says it will be taken private in a $10bn (£7.8bn) deal. The move brings to an end nearly a century of trading on public markets for the Walgreens Boots Alliance. It has seen its debt grow as cost-conscious customers chose to shop online and opted for cheaper … Read more
A powerful winter storm has hit parts of the US Midwest with strong winds and heavy snow. In Iowa, blizzard conditions left vehicles stranded on Wednesday. Video shows a snowplough used to move cars stuck in snow and lorries that had careened off roads.