Former independent counsel Ken Starr, who paved the way for the impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1998, and prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz will join President Trump's impeachment trial defence team, Trump's legal team and a source said on Friday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be very careful about what he says after Khamenei harshly criticized the United States in a Friday prayers sermon in Tehran.

A painting found in one of the walls of an Italian art gallery has been verified as an original Gustav Klimt, which was originally stolen nearly 23 years ago.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Friday the latest in a series of desperate ideas to sell off his predecessor's official jet, which he says is too luxurious for a country where half the people live in poverty.

Two protesters were killed and more than a dozen wounded in central Baghdad on Friday in renewed violence between anti-government demonstrators and Iraqi security forces, activists and officials said. The deaths follow weeks of calm.

Thailand has found a second case of a new Chinese coronavirus, a 74-year-old woman from China's central city of Wuhan.

More than 3,500 Central Americans had poured into Guatemala by Friday in U.S.-bound gatherings known as caravans, officials said, posing a headache for the leaders of Guatemala and Mexico amid fierce U.S. pressure to curb migration.

China's population has crept past 1.4 billion last year for the first time, even as the birthrate continues to fall.

Federal authorities in three U.S. airports will begin screening travelers arriving from Wuhan, China, for signs they may be infected with a new coronavirus spreading in Asia.

Rather than face accountability for using excessive force, authorities in India's largest state are directing residents to pay for damage resulting from antigovernment unrest.

Scholars are building a record of memories from the Armenian diaspora that chronicle an often untold perspective on life under the Ottoman Empire.

Russia's Vladimir Putin is the latest in a long line of authoritarian leaders whose aim apparently is to maintain their own power even while framing the moves as constitutional reform.

President Trump signs declaration authorizing federal aid to remove debris and support public health and safety in wake of Puerto Rico quakes.

Just 2½ weeks before they caucus, a majority of Iowa Democrats are still undecided on which candidate should face Trump.

We were there to cover the story, not be part of it. Still, there were temptations to break out of our observer roles, and we did on a few occasions.

Duchess Meghan visited a Vancouver women's center amid speculation about her royal future and news that her father could testify against her in a lawsuit.

Kristalina Georgieva compares today with “roaring 1920s” and criticises UK wealth gap

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy risks a return of the Great Depression, driven by inequality and financial sector instability.

Speaking at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington, Kristalina Georgieva said new IMF research, which compares the current economy to the “roaring 1920s” that culminated in the great market crash of 1929, revealed that a similar trend was already under way.

Efforts by policymakers to bolster the population after decades of strict family planning seem to be failing

China’s birthrate has fallen to the lowest level since the Communist country was founded in 1949, in a sign that efforts to head off a demographic crisis have so far failed.

There were 14.6 million births in China in 2019, a drop of about 500,000 from the year before and the third year in a row that the number of births fallen, according to a report from the National Bureau of Statistics published on Friday. It was the lowest number in seven decades, with the exception of 1961, the last year of a famine that left tens of millions dead.

Dershowitz is known for defending Jeffrey Epstein while Starr led the investigation that culminated in Bill Clinton’s impeachment

The White House has unveiled Donald Trump’s legal team for his Senate impeachment trial, a list of attorneys whose own ageing controversies threaten to overshadow their efforts to defend the president.

As the impeachment process enters a major new phase next week, Trump’s defense team will include Alan Dershowitz, known for defending the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and Kenneth Starr, the dogged prosecutor who led the investigation that culminated in the 1998 impeachment of former president Bill Clinton and lost a university post in 2016 for mishandling sexual assaults on campus.

Reports add to speculation that Duke and Duchess do not plan to spend much time in UK

Frogmore Cottage, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, is in the process of being shuttered, according to reports, fuelling speculation the couple do not intend to spend any meaningful time in the UK in the near future.

Related: It’s not just Meghan and Harry. I’d like us all to escape this dire royal circus | Suzanne Moore

Roberto Alvim set off a storm of outrage with comments about culture that were eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s propaganda chief

• ‘Like going back 40 years’: dismay as Bolsonaro backs abstinence-only sex ed
  

Brazil’s culture secretary, Roberto Alvim has been fired after he appeared to paraphrase the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in an online video to promote a national arts prize.

“Brazilian art in the next decade will be heroic and national,” said Alvim, to the music from Wagner’s Lohengrin, said to be Hitler’s favourite opera, with a portrait of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and a Brazilian flag in the background.

Remark came as US revealed 11 of its troops had been injured in 8 January missile attacks

Iran’s supreme leader has delivered a rare sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran in which he described Donald Trump as a “clown” who pretended to support the Iranian people but would push a poisonous dagger into their backs.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei struck a defiant tone following weeks of domestic and international turbulence, including the US killing of a top general, missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq and the accidental downing of an airliner that killed 176 people.

Woman in northern Syrian camp received letter this week confirming decision had been backdated three years

An Australian mother of five held in the deteriorating al-Hawl camp of northern Syria has been stripped of her citizenship – retroactive by three years – leaving two of her children potentially stateless and potentially permanently splitting her family.

The woman, who held Australian and Lebanese citizenship, was informed by letter this week her citizenship has been extinguished, backdated more than three years.

Exclusive: Extinction Rebellion and Peta also named in anti-extremism briefing alongside Combat 18 and National Action

A counter-terrorism police document distributed to medical staff and teachers as part of anti-extremism briefings included Greenpeace, Peta and other non-violent groups as well as neo-Nazis, the Guardian has learned.

The guide, produced by Counter Terrorism Policing, is used across England as part of training for Prevent, the anti-radicalisation scheme designed to catch those at risk of committing terrorist violence.