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By Manuel Ausloos, Reuters Two people embrace as relatives and supporters of Israelis killed in the 7 October Hamas attack attend a ceremony at the Nova memorial near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel on the first anniversary of the attacks. Photo: JOHN WESSELS/AFP Israelis marked the first anniversary of the devastating Hamas attack that triggered a war which has sparked protest worldwide and risks igniting a far wider conflict in the Middle East. Ceremonies and protests in Jerusalem and Israel's south began around 6.29am local time, the hour when Hamas launched rockets into Israel at the start of its 7 October assault last year and burst across the border, rampaging through towns. They killed some 1200 people and took about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Outside ...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hussam al-Masri, Reuters Displaced people arrive in Khan Yunis after being given notice by Israeli forces to evacuate from the eastern parts of the city in the southern Gaza Strip on 7 October, 2024, on the first anniversary of the ongoing war. Photo: BASHAR TALEB/AFP Israel stepped up air and ground attacks on Hamas in Gaza, killing at least 52 people according to Palestinian medics, on the first anniversary of a war that has left most of the territory in ruins and shattered the lives of its people. For its part, Hamas said it struck Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv with a missile salvo, setting off sirens in central Israel. Two people were lightly injured, according to the Israeli ambulance service. The rocket volley signalled Hamas' enduring ability to...

Photo: RMS Advisory / Supplied Tasmania's largest farm is back on the market and it's expected to fetch offers of more than A$100 million ($NZ110m). Rushy Lagoon is a sprawling 22,000-hectare property on the state's north-eastern tip. The late Allan Pye purchased the farm in 1996, snapping it up for $8 million at auction. Pye was one of New Zealand's richest farmers, making his fortune in potatoes. He passed away earlier this year and the sale is part of his estate. Peter Ryan from RMS Advisory is one of the agents handling the listing and said inquiries for the farm had been rolling in. "Rushy Lagoon is an iconic property, not just in Tasmanian terms, but in Australian terms," he said. "Just about everybody who is anybody in agriculture has heard about the fabled Rushy Lagoon. "We had a...

File picture. Photo: AFP Australian Dr Saul Newman from Oxford Institute of Population Ageing has been awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for his work debunking the idea that people in Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia in Italy and Greece live longer lives than average. These long-lived people we've been taking "lifestyle tips from" are "mostly corpses," Newman told RNZ's Afternoons. "I found out that at least 72 percent of the people in Greece over the age of 100, thousands of people, they're all dead. "These numbers come from the people handing out the pensions, and they've been handing out the pensions for 100-year-olds despite the fact that these people are dead. "It's extraordinary to have a ton of science based off this, because, like, what are you going to conclude? Essentially it's nonsense." Ok...

Russian President Vladimir Putin won a record post-Soviet landslide in a March election. (File photo) Photo: ALEXANDER KAZAKOV / AFP "God save the Tsar!" has been one of the first public birthday wishes for President Vladimir Putin. Putin, who turned 72 on Monday, has been Russia's paramount leader for nearly quarter of a century. The greeting came from ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin on his Telegram messaging channel minutes after midnight. Dugin, 62, has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire, which he wants to include Ukraine, where Russia has been waging a war. Dugin's daughter was killed in a suspected car bomb in 2022. Putin, who ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in 2022, won a record post-Soviet...