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This year's Pacific Islands Forum is being held in Tonga, from 26 to 30 August. Photo: RNZ A deputy Taiwan foreign minister will attend this week's meeting of Pacific Islands leaders in Tonga, Taiwan's foreign ministry said on Sunday, as China and the United States jostle for influence in the region. The Pacific is also an area of competition between Taipei and Beijing, as China whittles away at the number of countries that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan. Three countries - Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands - have stuck with Taiwan. Taiwan's foreign ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Tien Chung-kwang would hold a summit with its three Pacific allies to strengthen its partnership with them and other "like-minded countries", a reference to Western ...

Dr Anthony Fauci. Photo: AFP / Getty Images Former top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci is recovering from West Nile virus after being hospitalised with the mosquito-borne illness for nearly a week, he told Stat News on Saturday. Fauci, 83, became the face of the US government's efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He retired in December 2022 after 54 years at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) including 38 serving as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In an interview with Stat News on Saturday (local time), Fauci said he had spent six days in a hospital starting 16 August while doctors tried to discern the source of his weakness, fever and chills. He then tested positive for West Nile virus, and he told the d...

Police respond to the scene in Sydney. Photo: Screenshot / ABC Four people including a police officer were injured in a stabbing attack in Sydney early on Sunday, police said, the latest in a series of knife assaults in Australia's biggest city this year. A man who ran from the scene has been taken into custody, police said in a statement. There is no ongoing threat to people in Sydney, said New South Wales state Police Minister Yasmin Catley. Police said they did not believe anyone was killed in the attack, which followed a crash in the southern suburb of Engadine. Aerial footage of the scene by the Australian Broadcasting Corp showed two crashed cars cordoned off with police tape. Sydney, a city of 5 million, has experienced a spate of knife attacks this year, prompting the New South ...

By Matthias Inverardi, Petra Wischgoll and Tom Sims, Reuters LLate in the evening, a man (concealed behind police officers) turns himself in to the police on the street and claims to be the perpetrator. Photo: Christoph Reichwein / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP A man suspected of a stabbing rampage in the western German town of Solingen has been taken into police custody, a state official told German television on Saturday (local time), some 24 hours after the attack that killed three people. North Rhine-Westphalia's interior minister Herbert Reul told the ARD broadcaster that he was "a bit relieved" after authorities spent the day following a "hot lead" that led to the arrest. The Islamic State group earlier claimed responsibility for Friday's knife attack that also wounded eig...

By Tom Balmforth and Olena Harmash, Reuters Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks to media during a joint press conference with the Polish President and Lithuanian Prime Minister following their meeting in Kyiv on 24 August, 2024. Photo: SERGEI CHUZAVKOV / AFP President Volodymyr Zelensky touted a newly developed Ukrainian "drone missile" on Saturday that he said would take the war back to Russia and scornfully derided Russia's Vladimir Putin as a "sick old man from Red Square". As Ukraine marked 33 years of post-Soviet independence, Zelensky said the new weapon, Palianytsia, was faster and more powerful than the domestically made drones that Kyiv has so far used to fight back against Russia, striking its oil refineries and military airfields. "Our enemy will.....

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie Cairo city, on 17 July, 2024, in Cairo, Egypt, where negotiations toward a ceasefire in Gaza are centred. Photo: AFP/Mahmoud Elkwas Gaza ceasefire and hostage negotiators discussed new compromise proposals in Cairo on Saturday, seeking to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas as the UN reported worsening humanitarian conditions, with malnutrition soaring and polio discovered in the Palestinian enclave. Israeli military strikes in Gaza killed 50 people on Saturday, Palestinian health authorities said. Victims of hostilities over the past 48 hours remained lying on roads where fighting continued or trapped under rubble, the authorities said. A Hamas delegation arrived on Saturday to be nearer at hand to review any proposals that emerge in the mai...

By Matthias Inverardi, Petra Wischgoll and Tom Sims, Reuters People lay flowers and light candles in Neumarkt in memory of the victims of the knife attack at the Solingen town festival. Photo: HENNING KAISER / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP Three were killed and eight injured in a knife attack at a festival in Solingen. Islamic State has claimed responsibility. The assailant remains at large. Police have detained a 15-year-old possibly linked to the attack. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Saturday (local time) for a knife attack in the German city of Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight others. Police have detained a teenager who may be connected with a knife attack, but the perpetrator was still at large on Saturday. Describing the man who carr...

Photo: JOE RAEDLE/Getty Images via AFP By Joey Roulette, RNZ Two NASA astronauts who flew to the International Space Station in June aboard Boeing's faulty Starliner capsule will need to return to Earth on a SpaceX vehicle early next year, NASA chief Bill Nelson said on Saturday, deeming issues with Starliner's propulsion system too risky to carry its first crew home. The agency's decision, tapping Boeing's top space rival to return the astronauts, is one of NASA's most consequential in years. Boeing had hoped its Starliner test mission would redeem the troubled program after years of development problems and over US$1.6 billion in budget overruns since 2016. Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both former military test pilots, became the first crew to ride Starliner...