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A machete-wielding gang attacked a rival group in one of Hong Kong's busiest nightlife districts in the early hours of Friday, with the clash leaving one man with a gunshot wound and two others injured, police said.

An impregnable defence and two tries to Cullen Grace saw the Canterbury Crusaders overpower the Waikato Chiefs 20-7 in a ferocious Super Rugby semi-final in Christchurch on Friday.

France's first left-wing alliance in 25 years is on a mission to block centrist President Emmanuel Macron's plans for pro-business reforms by winning a big chunk of seats in this month's parliamentary polls.

The US and Chinese defence ministers will hold their first face-to-face talks in Singapore Friday, Chinese state media said, as the superpowers lock horns over security disputes ranging from Taiwan to contested waters.

Britain's biggest banks are no longer "too big to fail" in any future financial shocks, with shareholders rather than taxpayers ready to bear the cost, the Bank of England said Friday.

Shanghai will impose fresh lockdowns on residents in several city districts this weekend during a mass testing drive, officials said Friday, as President Xi Jinping called for China to stick "unswervingly" to its strict zero-Covid strategy.

Hong Kong's status as an international hub has been "undermined" by strict coronavirus border controls, outgoing leader Carrie Lam admitted Friday, just a day after saying she would not further lift restrictions before departing.

Markets extended a global sell-off Friday after the European Central Bank laid the groundwork to join others in a programme of interest rate hikes, while attention turns to the release of key US inflation data.

Toulouse's Australia second-row Rory Arnold said he is looking forward to hosting a fellow Wallaby Test lock in La Rochelle's Will Skelton when they meet in the French Top 14's play-offs on Saturday.

Dramatic footage of an attack by a group of machete-wielding assailants in one of Hong Kong's busiest nightlife districts emerged Friday, as local media reported a clash that left one man with a gunshot wound and two others injured.

On a sun-blasted hillside in southeast Turkey, the world's oldest known religious sanctuary is slowly giving up its secrets.

In normal times, Pablo Gonzalez would never have considered closing his restaurant at the height of summer. But this year, he's been forced to do just that for one day a week for lack of staff.

At the age of just 21, former engineering student Louis McKechnie has already been arrested 20 times and spent six weeks in prison.

A former janitor accused of dozens of rapes and sexual assaults in France and Belgium over several decades will go on trial in France on Friday, after admitting to a spate of assaults.

Italy has some spectacular beaches but the majority are private, run in an opaque and sometimes shady manner that the government has finally decided to bring into the light.

With gun control under debate and monkeypox in the headlines, Americans are facing a barrage of new twists on years-old misinformation in their social media feeds.

A toxic cocktail of sluggish growth and high inflation, plus Brexit and fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, is set to weigh on the pound in the coming months, economists warned.

A noisy backhoe digs up earth to uncover yet another mass grave in Iraq, human remains are exhumed and the forensics experts get to work on their grim task.

Asteroid dust collected by a Japanese space probe contains organic material that shows some of the building blocks of life on Earth may have been formed in space, scientists said Friday.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who leads an ideologically divided coalition perpetually facing collapse, has voiced doubts about the viability of his eight-party government.

Chinese history-maker Zhang Weili and two world title fights headline the return of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to Asia on Sunday after a break of more than two years because of Covid.

A Rolex watch worn by a British prisoner during the real-life "Great Escape" from the Nazi Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp sold for $189,000 on Thursday in New York.

Sprayed between Sweden and Finland, the autonomous Aland Islands are a picturesque archipelago once part of Russia and demilitarised since 1856.

Men in make-up and wigs twirl on stage in colourful robes to applause in Morocco, resurrecting the musical art of "Aita" and challenging gender stereotypes in the conservative Muslim-majority kingdom.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were "holding on" in the flashpoint eastern city Severodonetsk where intense street battles with Russian troops could determine the fate of the Donbas region.

President Xi Jinping said China must stick "unswervingly" to its zero-Covid strategy, as more than half of Shanghai's 25 million lockdown-weary residents gird Friday for a weekend virus testing drive.

Vladimir Zotov, a resident of the southern Russian city of Volgograd, says he feels sorry for Ukrainian civilians who died during Moscow's intervention but insists the Kremlin had no other choice.

When Megumi Ota needed the morning-after pill in Japan, she couldn't get a prescription in time under a policy activists call an attempt to "control" women's reproductive rights.

Asia extended losses across world markets on Friday after the European Central Bank laid the groundwork to join others in a programme of interest rate hikes, while attention turns to the release of key US inflation data.

Nearly 60 years after preaching virtues of patience and modesty as Mary Poppins and governess Maria, Julie Andrews declared herself "gobsmacked" to have her career honored at a glitzy Hollywood gala Thursday.

Ukraine has depleted its Soviet and Russian-designed weaponry and is now completely dependent on allies for arms to defend against Russia's invasion, US military sources say.

The horrors of the bloodiest chapter so far in the Ukraine conflict are poignantly captured in the words and drawings of an eight-year-old boy.