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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken boards a plane as he departs Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on 21 October, 2024, en route to the Middle East. Photo: Nathan Howard / POOL / AFP By Humeyra Pamuk, Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to capitalise on the killing of Hamas' leader by securing the release of the 7 October attack hostages and ending the war in Gaza. After repeated abortive attempts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Blinken was making his 11th trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war erupted - and the last before a presidential election that could upend US policy. Blinken was also seeking ways to defuse an escalating spillover conflict between Israel and the Ir...

A checkpoint near the Hamrin Mountains, where a raid has seen Iraqi forces kill nine Islamic State commanders (file photo). Photo: AFP / LAURENT PERPIGNA IBAN Iraqi forces have killed nine Islamic State (IS) group commanders, including the jihadists' top figure in the country, Baghdad announced Tuesday, with the Pentagon saying two US troops were injured during the raid. Iraq's Joint Operations Command said in a statement that counterterrorism forces "killed nine terrorists, among them the so-called governor of Iraq" for IS, naming him as Jassim al-Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader. The statement said the raid in the northern Hamrin Mountains was carried out "with technical support" and intelligence provided by the US-led anti-jihadist coalition, and said that "large quantities of weapons" were ...

By James Redmayne for Reuters King Charles and Queen Camilla are on a three-day visit to Samoa as part of CHOGM. Photo: AFP King Charles III will be offered the title of high chief in Samoa during a three-day visit starting on Wednesday and be shown the impact of rising sea levels due to climate change. Lenatai Victor Tamapua, a Samoan chief and member of parliament, said he planned to offer the title of Tui Taumeasina to the monarch during a traditional ceremonial welcome to the king and Queen Camilla on Thursday. He will later lead the king through a walkway on a mangrove reserve highlighting the impact of climate change on the Pacific nations and its communities. "The king tide today is about twice that it was 20, 30 years ago, and that is affecting our land, and it's eating away ...

ABBA singer Bjorn Ulvaeus photographed in Stockholm, Sweden, 2023. Photo: AFP / Henrik Montgomery Thousands of artists including ABBA singer Bjorn Ulvaeus, Hollywood actress Julianne Moore and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro have signed a statement warning about the unlicensed use of artificial intelligence. Some 11,500 stars of music, literature, screen and stage had put their names to the statement by Tuesday (local time), as fears mount over tech companies using existing creative works to train up AI models without permission from their original creators. "The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted," read the brief statement. In Hollywood, studios have been expe...

Most of the people who became ill reported eating McDonald's Quarter Pounder sandwiches (file image). Photo: SCOTT OLSON / AFP The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention issued a food safety alert Tuesday regarding an E. coli outbreak that it says is linked with McDonald's Quarter Pounders. At least 49 illnesses have been reported across 10 states, including one death of an older person. Ten people have been hospitalised, including a child who had haemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious complication that can develop from an E. coli infection. Most of the illnesses are in Colorado and Nebraska. Most of the people who became ill reported eating McDonald's Quarter Pounder sandwiches, the CDC says. The agency says that the investigation is "fast-moving" and that information reviewed by...