Aukus: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China

There is a lot of support for Donald Trump to become a future kingmaker, Greg Swenson, of Republicans Overseas UK, says. The former president made his first major speech since leaving office, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Florida, over the weekend, hinting he might run again. Mr Swenson told BBC World News Mr…

The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature says he thought the phone call telling him he’d won was a cold caller. Luckily, Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was persuaded not to hang up. Speaking to the BBC’s Ros Atkins, he says he was making a cup of tea when the phone rang, telling the…

Nine Catalan separatists convicted over a failed independence bid in 2017 have been formally pardoned by the Spanish government. President of the government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, told BBC World News that the priority now was to have an agreed referendum as this was the best way to achieve independence. In Spain tens of thousands…

BBC Click’s LJ Rich looks at the best tech news stories of the week including: Apple unveiled new iPhone 13 handsets which come with Cinematic Mode, a portrait-style option for shooting videos with depth of field. TikTok launched a range of mental health features, with some support resources linked to the search term “suicide”. Australian…

Former Afghan finance minister Omar Zakhilwal says there is no alternative to working with the Taliban. He travelled to Kabul after the city’s fall to the Taliban. Like the rest of Afghanistan he is waiting to see what the Taliban decide to do, but says he is in the capital trying to help form an…

A sharp rise in the number of new coronavirus infections has been seen in Russia. Konstantin Severinov, a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, told BBC World News that only about 10% of the country was fully vaccinated and there was a strong anti-vaccination sentiment in the country. Mandatory vaccines for staff in public-facing roles…