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World wine output is on course to hit another 60-year low in 2024. Photo: World wine output is on course to hit another 60-year low in 2024 as vineyards in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres endured adverse weather as they did last year, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said on Friday. In its first global projections for 2024, the OIV pegged world wine output, excluding juices and musts, at between 227 million and 235 million hectolitres (mhl), with a mid-range estimate of 231 mhl. The mid-range figure was 2 percent lower than last year's output and the smallest since 1961, the OIV said. A hectolitre is the equivalent of 133 standard wine bottles. "Globally, 2024 appears to be a re-run of 2023," the OIV said in a note. "As with 2023, extreme or atypical met...

By Rob Picheta for CNN Debate over the issue sharply divided lawmakers, many of whom have laboured to choose a side during an unusually strained week in Westminster. Photo: Unsplash/ Marcin Nowak British members of parliament have voted to legalise assisted dying, approving a contentious proposal that would make the United Kingdom one of a small handful of nations to allow terminally ill people to end their lives. Lawmakers in the House of Commons voted by 330 to 275 to support the bill, after an hours-long debate in the chamber and a years-long campaign by high-profile figures that drew on emotional first-hand testimony. Britain is now set to join a small club of nations to have legalised the process, and one of the largest by population to allow it. The bill must still clear the Ho...

A man rides his motorbike through a flooded street after a heavy downpour in Kota Bharu, in Malaysia's Kelantan state, on November 29, 2024. Photo: AFP / Mohd Rasfan Three people have died and more than 80,000 have been evacuated from floods across several Malaysian states, the government said on Friday as officials warned the monsoon season could bring the country's worst flooding in a decade. Floods are common on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia during the monsoon period between October and March, but this week's torrential rain has led to the mass evacuations, mostly in the northeastern state of Kelantan that borders Thailand. The National Disaster Command Centre's website said as of Friday morning three people had died and 80,589 people had been evacuated to 467 temporary shelt...