Reuters

From the butcher's shop where he works near Sao Paulo's historic center, Kleyton Zacarioto says customer traffic has been slowing for years thanks, he says, to a long period of rising food prices. 

Pope Leo said on Friday that the United Nations and other multilateral groups were in crisis, warning in a speech at the Paris headquarters of the UN culture and education body, UNESCO, that international dialogue risked becoming a "charade".

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 15 prisoners in a decree on Thursday that follows talks last week with an envoy for US President Donald Trump.

Purges of military leaders may have dented China's war-fighting readiness, but are likely to have strengthened President Xi Jinping's grip on an institution that is a key source of power for the ruling Communist Party, diplomats and analysts say.

The pro-Putin ruling United Russia party retained its decisive majority in the national parliament, near-complete election results showed on Monday, while the anti-war Yabloko party appeared to have won a tiny foothold in one regional parliament.

Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been re-elected to a fifth term as leader of his southern, mainly Muslim region of Chechnya with almost 100% of the vote, Russia's electoral commission said on Monday.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) took first place in state elections in northeastern Germany on Sunday, exit polls showed, delivering the worst result for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative party since 1949.

Ukraine launched what Moscow's mayor called the biggest drone attack yet on the Russian capital on Sunday, as Russians voted on the final day of a parliamentary election that President Vladimir Putin has cast as a test of support for the war in Ukraine.

Some Western politicians are seeking conflict between NATO and Russia after a "failed" strategy to defeat Moscow in its war with Ukraine, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Saturday.

A former Russian federal official has been elected president of South Ossetia, a Russia-backed breakaway region of Georgia, in a vote Moscow hailed on Saturday as a sign of the territory's desire for closer ties with Moscow.

Russians began voting on Friday in a three-day parliamentary election which President Vladimir Putin has said will show that millions of people back his army fighting in Ukraine, even though most anti-war candidates were not allowed to run.   

The US government has approved up to $414 million in financing for a uranium project in Niger, according to the project's developer, in what sources described as a win for Washington two years after the West African nation expelled all US forces.