America Uruguay To restore police presence on the streets is priority for Montevideo's new police chief, who rejects the idea of heavy hand, defends use of armored vehicles to protect officers, maintains that Uruguay is far from falling into violence as Central America
Europe France Smoking will be banned on all the country's beaches, in public parks, forests and near schools, after Emmanuel Macron promised to create 'the first tobacco-free generation'; 7.200 smoke-free zones already exist in France
Europe Kosovo A group of young people from Belgrade and Pristina has created a new dictionary highlighting how much Serbs and Albanians have in common, with over 2.000 entries of shared words and surnames bridging ethnic and national divides
Europe Russia Russia's Supreme Court has ruled that the LGBT 'movement' is 'extremist', sparking a global outcry over fears that the designation will allow the country to tighten repression against gays and transgender people
America Dominica The Dominica Chess Federation held its first Queens Gala, a women-only chess tournament, at the UWI Open Campus, with 10 women participating in six rounds of chess matches
Africa Ghana The country has declared a 46-day visa-on-arrival regime for visitors, from 1 December 2023 to 15 January 2024, part of government's ambitious 10-year 'Beyond Return' campaign designed to encourage Africans in the diaspora to reconnect with Ghana
Europe Italy The European Commission approved Italy's €1,7 billion state aid mechanism to support photovoltaic installations, part of the Instrument for Recovery and Resilience and part of the strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions increasing renewable energy
Europe Liechtenstein Liechtenstein and Switzerland will improve cooperation and protection of gamblers with agreement to exchange data on gambling suspensions; until now, people banned from gambling in one of the two countries could still access casinos in the other country
Africa Sierra Leone Eugenia Kargbo, 35, has been appointed as Freetown's city heating manager and is one of seven women appointed worldwide to help cities adapt to extreme heat, the first on the African continent
Africa Algeria The second edition of the Treg Algeria Trail has kicked off, a race and trek in the middle of the Algerian Sahara, with 4 categories with lengths from 50 to 182 km; participants are self-sufficient in food and self-navigating via GPS
Africa Mauritius Mauritian Wildlife Foundation has signed an agreement with US-based biotechnology and genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences to help bring back to life the dodo, an iconic bird that used to live on Mauritius, extinct for more than 300 years
Europe Serbia Novak Djokovic and his Serbian teammates at the Davis Cup finals sang a song seen by many as support for so-called Greater Serbia, calling for the Serbian tricolour to be flown over parts of neighbouring Kosovo and Montenegro
Africa Ivory Coast The country's first retirement home, opened in September, is still empty as no one wants to live in the facility, for economic, cultural and social reasons, as tradition sees the care of the elderly as a matter entirely entrusted to family and community
Africa Burkina Faso The country lost almost 47,5% of its forests between 1992 and 2014, according to a study conducted in 2022; another study conducted in 2018 showed that there were almost 15.600 square kilometres of degraded land in the country