Blog

A plume of smoke rises in the sky of Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on 9 October 2023. Photo: AFP Today marks one year since Hamas militants crossed into Israel and launched a large-scale terror attack, killing more than 1000 people and kidnapping more than 200 others. Days later, Israel announced it was at war, and began a brutal, long-term retaliation on the militant group in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people have died in Israeli strikes in Gaza in the past year. More than 1000 people have also died in Lebanon in recent weeks, as Israel pivots its attacks towards Hamas ally Hezbollah. Some of the Israeli hostages taken in the initial Hamas attack are still believed to be held in Gaza. Millions of people have been displaced and face severe shortages of water, food, medical care ...

Palestinians help a man injured in an Israeli strike that targeted a mosque-turned-shelter in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, during the night of 6 October 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. Photo: BASHAR TALEB / AFP At least 24 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes targeted a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday morning local time, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said. The strikes on the mosque and the school, near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, came as the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas in the enclave approaches its first anniversary. In its own statement, the Israeli military said it conducted...

Dionne Warwick is coming to New Zealand in January 2025. Photo: Supplied / Frontier Touring At the end of the 1980s and in the latter years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, then-US President Ronald Reagan still struggled to say the word AIDS, let alone acknowledge the seriousness of the disease. But then he had a curveball question at an event. It didn't come from a reporter - it came from American singer and actress Dionne Warwick, one of the first in the music industry to advocate for those with HIV AIDS. Warwick's question at an event - "And what am I working on, President Reagan, that makes you so proud of me?"- cornered Reagan into one of his first public utterances of the term "AIDS". "If his eyes could kill me I wouldn't be talking to you today, " Warwick told RNZ's Jim Mora on Sunday M...

By Stephanie Kelly, Reuters Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/AFP In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene in the United States this week, a new storm emerged on social media - false rumours about how disaster funds have been used, and even claims that officials control the weather. Local and national government officials say they are trying to combat the rumours, including one spread by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. One of the more far-fetched rumours is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup. Rep...

By Leigh Thomas and Kanishka Singh, Reuters Pro-Palestinian protesters rally in support of Gaza and Lebanon in Times Square on 5 October, 2024 in New York City. Photo: STEPHANIE KEITH / AFP Thousands of protesters took to the streets in major cities around the world on Saturday demanding an end to bloodshed in Gaza and the wider Middle East as the start of Israel's war in the Palestinian enclave approaches its first anniversary. About 40,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London, while thousands also gathered in Paris, Rome, Manila, Cape Town and New York City. Demonstrations were also held near the White House in Washington, protesting US support for its ally Israel in military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. Protesters at Times Square in New York City wore the...