East Africa has not just suffered from the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, but also the worst locust plague in decades. Now, the swarms are returning, and experts are concerned about food security in the region.

Since January, women have been allowed to operate trains in the Moscow metro system — a job that used to be one of several hundred that were forbidden for women in Russia. But the Russian Ministry of Labor has now reduced that list to 100.

The first census in 10 years has revealed an aging populace and fewer children being born. The cost of housing is a key factor, but urban centers are still booming.

With one in every 10 children working, the world is on the brink of "losing ground in the fight against child labor," UNICEF and the International Labor Organization have warned.

A huge forest blaze in Cyprus has killed four people, destroyed homes and forced evacuations of villages as Greece, Israel and other countries deployed fire-fighting planes to the Mediterranean island.

As the southern European nation battles hundreds of wildfires, Prime Minister Mitsotakis has warned that the country is facing its worst heat wave for 30 years. Extreme weather in 1987 claimed more than 1,500 lives.

The Indian Ocean island nation's worst drought in 40 years has left hundreds of thousands of people fighting for survival as the crisis gets more dire by the day.

The Taliban have seized major cities in Afghanistan as they race to take full control of the country, inching closer to Kabul. Meanwhile, the United States and Britain are deploying thousands of troops to evacuate their citizens from the capital. The conflict has escalated dramatically since May, when US-led forces began the final stage of their troop withdrawal. Ahead of the end of the NATO and US military mission on August 31, AFP spoke to war veterans about their time in Afghanistan.

The United States has completed its evacuation mission, allowing the Taliban to take full control of Kabul airport. The departure comes almost exactly 20 years after the US and allied troops invaded Afghanistan.

Fans of ABBA in Stockholm outside a museum dedicated to the group say they are thrilled after the Swedish superstars announced a musical comeback with a new album and a London show featuring their performances captured by digital avatars.

North Korea escapee Hiroko Saito says she and 97,000 others were deceived into relocating to the North in the 1960s with promises of "paradise on Earth." Instead, she suffered starvation, repression and loss.

Between 1991 and 2002, the small West African nation of Sierra Leone was ravaged by a decade of war, which left between 50,000 and 200,000 people dead. The conflict was also marked by rapes, mutilations and the forced use of child soldiers in both the rebel and regular armies. Twenty years on, the country is still trying to recover from the civil war, one of Africa's most brutal. Sierra Leone remains deeply divided and plagued by corruption. And despite its many riches, it is one of the poorest countries in the world.