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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...

By Steve Holland, Reuters Tesla CEO Elon Musk (R) jumps on stage as he joins former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally at site of his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on 5 October. Photo: JIM WATSON / AFP Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday (local time) returned to the rural Pennsylvania site where he was nearly assassinated, rallying a large crowd in the critical battleground state one month before the 5 November election. "As I was saying," Trump said as he appeared on stage, pretending he was resuming the speech that was interrupted when he was grazed in the ear by a bullet on 13 July. In mid-speech, Trump called up on stage a powerful ally - Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of social m...

Hashem Safieddine in May 2024. Photo: ANWAR AMRO / AFP A high-level Hezbollah source said on Saturday (local time) that contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely touted as potentially the group's next leader, had been lost following Israeli strikes this week. Responding to the AFP report, the group said in a statement that there were "no Hezbollah sources and our viewpoint is issued in official statements". It did not confirm or deny whether contact with Safieddine was lost. "Contact with Sayyed Safieddine has been lost since the violent strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs" early on Friday, the official told AFP. "We don't know if he was at the targeted site, or who may have been there with him," he added. A second source close to Hezbollah also confirmed that communication had been cut o...