Blog

This combination of file pictures created on August 3, 2024 shows US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaking on March 26, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina; and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaking in the first presidential debate with US President Joe Biden in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. Photo: AFP Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 47 percent to 40 percent in the race to win the 5 November US presidential election, as she appeared to blunt Trump's edge on the economy and jobs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published today found. Harris had a lead of six percentage points based on unrounded figures - which showed her with support from 46.61 percent of registered voters w...

By Joseph Ax, Reuters This photo obtained 22 August 2017 courtesy of the Missouri Department of Corrections shows death-row inmate Marcellus Williams. Photo: HANDOUT / AFP A Missouri man is scheduled to be executed today unless the US Supreme Court intervenes at the last minute, even though the prosecutor's office that secured his murder conviction 21 years ago has expressed doubts about the integrity of the case. Marcellus Williams, 55, was expected to be put to death by lethal injection at 6pm Tuesday local time (11am Wednesday NZT) at a prison in Bonne Terre, a day after both Missouri Governor Mike Parson and the state's highest court rejected his last-ditch bids to avoid execution. Williams was found guilty in 2003 of killing Felicia "Lisha" Gayle, a former newspaper reporter who...

By David Shepardson, Reuters Delta Air Lines has vowed to take legal action, saying the outage forced it to cancel 7000 flights. Photo: AFP / Getty Images North America A senior executive at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike apologised at an appearance before a US House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday for a faulty software update that caused a global IT outage in July. Adam Meyers, senior vice president for counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, told the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee that CrowdStrike released a content configuration update for its Falcon Sensor security software that resulted in system crashes worldwide. "We are deeply sorry this happened and we are determined to prevent this from happening again," Meye...

The deceased was said to be a 64-year-old American woman. Photo: ARND WIEGMANN/AFP Warning: this story discusses suicide and euthanasia. Swiss police have arrested several people after a controversial futuristic-looking capsule designed to allow its occupant to commit suicide was used for the first time, authorities said on Wednesday. Police in the northern canton of Schaffhausen bordering Germany said the so-called "Sarco" capsule had been deployed in a wood in the municipality of Merishausen on Monday local time. Prosecutors in Schaffhausen have opened criminal proceedings against several people for "inducing and aiding and abetting suicide", a police statement said, adding several people were detained, without giving details about them or the deceased. A spokesperson for the group be...

By Esther Linder, ABC with wires Smoke billows from a site targeted by Israeli shelling in the southern Lebanese village of Zaita. Photo: MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP Hundreds of people are dead across Lebanon after the Israeli military carried out a bombing campaign in the country's south and east. Following what is said to have been Lebanon's deadliest day since its civil war, the US and UN have urged both parties to de-escalate tensions before war breaks out. Read more: Here's what we know so far: What's happening in Lebanon? After months of stewing tensions, Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah campaigns across the Israeli-Lebanese border has intensified, forcing thousands to flee. The Israeli military bombed about 1600 locations it said were Hezbollah targets throughout Leban...