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By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters People check the damage outside the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, following Israeli strikes around the medical complex. Photo: AFP Palestinian health officials said on Sunday (local time) that Israeli forces had shelled the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, damaging electricity and oxygen pumps and disrupting urgent surgeries. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the hospital, one of only three barely operational on the northern edge of the enclave, said the facility was hit by around 100 tank shells and bombs, wounding several of the medical staff and patients. "The situation is extremely dangerous. We have patients in the intensive care unit and others awaiting surgeries. Access to the operating r...

The Chinese embassy in New Zealand has rejected US accusations about the operation that breached the networks of major global telecommunications providers. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER The Chinese Embassy has condemned accusations about a cyber attack as "unfounded and irresponsible smears and slanders". The National Cyber Security Centre put out an advisory last week alongside US and other authorities about an operation called Salt Typhoon, that breached the networks of major global telecommunications providers, which they blamed on China-affiliated hackers. US authorities who had investigated it for months said hackers accessed phone conversations and texts, and swept up masses of metadata from Americans. But the Chinese embassy in New Zealand rejected this and criticised the US. "We urge...

Stan Grant told Saturday Morning The Voice was a modest proposal to enshrine Aboriginal Australians into the constitution. Photo: Harper Collins Australian journalist Stan Grant's new book Murriyang Song of Time is a response to the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum. Grant is a Wiradjuri first nations Australian with a long broadcasting career, reporting extensively from around the world for more than three decades. Grant told Saturday Morning The Voice was a modest proposal to enshrine Aboriginal Australians into the constitution. "It sought to put into the constitution the acknowledgement of First Nations people, as the first peoples, which is obviously unquestioned. "And then to form an administrative body, one that would have no veto power, would control no money, would n...

Syria has been in the grip of a horrifically brutal dictatorship for decades. Photo: AFP / Omar Haj Kadour By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN Analysis - In every crisis lies opportunity, and in every opportunity lurks crisis. The startling advance of Syria's opposition in a week is the unintended consequence of two other conflicts, one near and one far. It leaves several key US allies with a new and largely unknown Islamist-led force, governing swathes of their strategic neighbour - if not most of it, given the pace of events, by the time you read this. Syria has absorbed so much diplomatic oxygen in the past 20 years, it is fitting this week of sweeping change popped up as if from a vacuum. Since the invasion of Iraq, the US has struggled to find a policy for Syria that could accommodate the vas...

People stand atop a toppled statue of Syria’s late president Hafez al-Assad in Damascus on December 8, 2024. Islamist-led rebels declared that they have taken Damascus in a lightning offensive on on December 8, sending President Bashar al-Assad fleeing and ending five decades of Baath rule in Syria. Photo: LOUAI BESHARA / AFP By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Timour Azhari, Reuters Syria's army command notified officers on Sunday that President Bashar al-Assad's 24-year authoritarian rule has ended, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters, following a rapid rebel offensive that took the world by surprise. Syrian rebels, who said Damascus was "now free of Assad", are expected to broadcast their first statement to the Syrian people on state television, two rebel sources said. ...