The best photos from the international wire agencies as chosen by our picture editors.

Doctors in Ukraine have performed heart surgery on a child in the dark, as blackouts hit a hospital in Kyiv.

Since early October, Russia has launched missiles roughly once a week in a bid to destroy the Ukrainian power grid. It has succeeded in causing major damage.

The group has published a lengthy video questioning the activities of the Russian embassy in Australia, runs letter writing campaigns, and raised money for humanitarian needs for Ukraine.

President Xi Jinping faces many challenges as he tries to steer his nation out of COVID-zero.

Is the attractive new-generation politician the true great-grandson of Taiwan’s revered first president or is he a Trojan horse doing Beijing’s bidding?

Despite the marijuana bars, neon signs and tourism dollars, some people are pushing to see the drug criminalised again.

France decriminalised abortion in 1975, two years after Roe v. Wade. With the landmark US law rolled back, French MPs are taking a stand.

Sledgehammers have become an unofficial symbol of the Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group whose fighters use them to kill during overseas missions.

Ukrainian doctors have performed heart surgery using torches and headlamps after a Russian missile strike caused a blackout.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the world’s go-to historian on Russia. His latest non-fiction book is his most ambitious yet, charting no less than the world’s history, ending with the war in Ukraine.

Kyiv has been battered by Russian air strikes leaving millions of people without power.

“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick, just sick,” Biden said earlier. “It has no social redeeming value, zero, none.”

The billionaire executive took the action in response to a poll he conducted on Twitter. Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.

Through a lawyer, Tarek Namouz said he mixed money he earned from the barber shop and the government’s assistance.

Lawmakers say they are defending traditional values of the “Russian world” against a liberal West they say is determined to destroy them.

Data from National Disaster Mitigation Agency showed that 100 of the 272 confirmed deaths from the earthquake on Java were children.

Paralympian John McFallcould could become the first disabled astronaut as he is among a small group chosen by the European Space Agency.

The twice-jailed candidate has been waiting in the wings for years and will now get a chance to lead.

Workers at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, Apple’s main iPhone-making plant, clashed with security personnel after almost a month under COVID restrictions.