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People inspect a cemetery that was damaged an Israeli airstrike targeting a nearby appartment building, on 3 October, 2024 in central Beirut. Photo: IBRAHIM AMRO / AFP Rocket sirens wail in northern Israeli towns as Hezbollah keeps up cross-border fire Hezbollah says it has fired rockets at Haifa Bay WHO says 28 healthcare workers killed in 24 past hours Israel's military told residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately on Thursday (local time) as it pressed on with its cross-border incursion and struck Hezbollah targets in a suburb of Beirut. The latest warnings took the number of southern towns subject to evacuation calls to 70 and included the provincial capital Nabatieh, suggesting another Israeli military operation was imminent against th...

The BBC was due to grill Boris Johnson about his government's handling of the Covid pandemic. Photo: Brandon Bell / Getty Images via AFP The BBC cancelled a prime-time interview with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson after one of its best-known presenters accidentally sent him the notes prepared for her questions. Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC's former political editor and now the host of its flagship Sunday morning news programme, said she mistakenly sent Johnson the notes "in a message meant for my team" and this meant the interview had to be cancelled. "It's very frustrating, and there's no point pretending it's anything other than embarrassing and disappointing, as there are plenty of important questions to be asked," Kuenssberg said on X. "But red faces aside, honesty is the ...

Salomons Atoll in the Chagos. Photo: Wikimedia / Charles and Anne Sheppard - University of Warwick Britain says it will give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal that would allow people displaced decades ago to return home while London retains use of the UK-U.S. military base on Diego Garcia. Britain said that the operation of Diego Garcia, a strategic military base jointly operated with the United States, was protected by the agreement, which also allows Mauritius to resettle the rest of the islands after its population was displaced. "This government inherited a situation where the long-term, secure operation of the Diego Garcia military base was under threat, with contested sovereignty and ongoing legal challenges," British Foreign Minister David Lammy said in ...

George Harrison's 'Futurama' guitar was one of his most played. Photo: AFP / Axel Heimken An electric guitar played by the late guitarist George Harrison in the early days of the Beatles will go up for sale at an auction next month where it could be sold for more than US$800,000 (NZ$1.3 million). Bought from a music store in the band's birth city of Liverpool, Harrison played the Futurama guitar in the early 1960s when the band performed at the Cavern Club, toured Germany and made their first official records for Polydor. The auctioneers say the Futurama guitar, with its sunburst finish, was one of his most played. They call it "one of the holy grails of historic Beatles guitars" and said it is expected to exceed its estimate price tag of US $600,000-$800,000 (NZ$965,000-$1.3m). Harriso...