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The bodies of Palestinians killed during the war are buried in a mass grave on January 30, 2024 in Rafah, Gaza. Photo: Yasser Qudihe / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP By Yolande Knell, Merlyn Thomas and Paul Brown, BBC News More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Hamas-run health ministry says. That number - 40,005 on Thursday - equates to about 1.7 percent of the 2.3 million population of the territory - another sobering indication of the human cost of the war. Alongside the fatalities, satellite image analysis suggests nearly 60 percent of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war. In the past few months, the southern city of R...

By Paul Kirby and Smitha Mundasad, BBC News A patient showing his hand with a sore caused by an infection of the monkeypox virus (file photo). Photo: ERNESTO BENAVIDES Sweden's public health agency has recorded what it says is the first case of a more dangerous variant of mpox outside the African continent. The person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where there is currently a major outbreak of mpox Clade 1, the agency said. The news comes just hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the outbreak of mpox in parts of Africa was now a public health emergency of international concern. At least 450 people died during an initial outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the disease has since spread to areas of Central and East Africa. Accordi...

Australia's Rachael Gunn, known as Raygun, competes in the women's breaking dance at the Paris Olympics. Photo: Odd Andersen/AFP Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn said the backlash she has received since she competed at the Paris Olympics has been devastating, and pleaded for privacy for herself and her family and friends. "I really appreciate the positivity, and I'm glad I was able to bring some joy into your lives. That's what I hoped," Gunn, who is known as B-girl Raygun, said in an Instagram post on Thursday. "I didn't realise that that would also open the door to so much hate which has, frankly, been pretty devastating." Gunn was lambasted online and in mainstream media after she lost all three of her round robin battles in Paris, where breaking made its Olympic debut. "Well, I w...

By Ian Aikman for BBC News and Jonathan Beale Defence correspondent Ukrainian servicemen operate a Soviet-made T-72 tank in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia, on August 12, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AFP / Roman Pilipey Ukraine has set up a military administrative office in Russia's Kursk region, where its surprise incursion into Russian territory continues, according to its top military commander. General Oleksandr Syrsky said the office would "maintain law and order" and "meet the immediate needs" of the population in the area. In a video posted on social media, Gen Syrsky is seen telling a meeting chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the office has been created "on the territories controlled by Ukraine". Russian Defence Minister...

By Patrick Wright for ABC Photo: 123RF Most people have heard of the "five stages of grief".  The idea is that as we grieve, we progress through different stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This popular concept was introduced by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. What might surprise you is that, despite its popularity, there is no scientific basis for the model and experts say it can be more harmful than helpful. "There is no evidence that people move through these stages - or that the stages even exist," says Chris Hall, a psychologist and chief executive of Grief Australia. How the five stages model came about Kübler-Ross developed the five stages model while working with terminally ill people in US hosp...