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Kiwi country music queen Tami Neilson is heading to Nashville to play the Grand Ole Opry. Only the elite in country music get to play and you have to be invited to perform. The Opry is the radio show that made country music famous and has been running for 98 years. It's launched the careers of Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson. It's 30 years since she attended the Opry with her family, she told RNZ's Nine to Noon. "I was 16 years old, I was living in Nashville with my family. We were playing shows there, and we were living in our motor home in a trailer park. I mean, does it get more country than that?" For country musicians the Opry is "our Carnegie Hall," she said. "I still have the ticket stub from when we attended. It's in my scrapbook from when I...

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...