AFP

Saudi Arabia is scaling back its famed chequebook diplomacy, a longstanding policy of splashing petro-dollars in exchange for influence, which observers say has yielded few tangible gains. For decades, the wealthy kingdom funneled…

The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic crossed 190,000 on Friday, with nearly two-thirds of the fatalities in Europe, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources at 0740 GMT. A total of 190,089 people have…

More than 300,000 cases of the new coronavirus were recorded in Europe, with more than half registered in Italy (86,498) and Spain (64,059), according to an AFP tally at 1640 GMT on Friday. There were a total of 305,851 cases in…