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A Middle East Airlines plane is seen on the tarmac of Rafik Hariri international airport in the Lebanese capital Beirut, on 10 August, 2022. Photo: AFP / Roy Issa Flights at Beirut airport have been cancelled or delayed with Lebanon's Middle East Airlines (MEA) saying disruptions to its schedule were related to insurance risks, as tensions escalate between Israel and armed political group Hezbollah. Lufthansa on Monday said it had suspended five routes to and from Beirut by the group's carriers Swiss International Air Lines, Eurowings and Lufthansa up to and including 30 July "in an abundance of caution". A rocket strike that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday has added to concerns that Israel and the Iran-backed group could engage in a fu...

By Hannah Ritchie, BBC News, Sydney An Instagram post shared by Kai McKenzie (second from left) with friends as he recovers after a shark attack. Photo: Instagram / @kai_mckenzie A surfer whose severed leg washed up on an Australian beach after it was bitten off by a shark has confirmed the limb has not been reattached. Kai McKenzie, was surfing near Port Macquarie in New South Wales (NSW) last Tuesday, when what he describes as "the biggest shark I've ever seen" attacked him. The 23-year-old managed to catch a wave into shore, where he was helped by an bystander who made a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding. His leg washed up a short time later and was put on ice by locals, before being taken to hospital, where a medical team had hoped surgery may save it. But on Monday, almo...

China is in trouble - and New Zealand should look to Japan for a way out of its reliance on it, a geopolitical expert says. "No one is in a worse position than the Chinese," Peter Zeihan, a top geo-political strategist, says. "According to the data that the Chinese have updated in just the last year... they've got a fertility rate that is one quarter, or below, replacement levels in all of their major cities. "So, we're looking at the demographic collapse of the Chinese state within 10 years, and that assumes nothing else goes wrong - no trade war with the United States, no government breakdown because of the cult of personality that has arisen around chairman Xi [Jinping], no conflict, nothing." Zeihan's dramatic predictions are in the latest episode of RNZ's multimedia programme, 30 with...

Photo: Composite image: Donald Trump AFP/Mark Peterson. Joe Biden AFP/Mandel Ngan In 2020 an exasperated Joe Biden came out swinging in the first presidential debate, exclaiming to then-president Donald Trump: "Will you shut up, man?" Four years on, he may have wished he said it again. While the interruptions which marked the chaotic first 2020 presidential debate were absent thanks to muting of microphones and talking turns were tightly controlled by CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, fast-talking Trump still dominated 2024's first debate. Read more of RNZ's coverage of the first US presidential debate: Softly-spoken and raspy, the 81-year-old Biden managed to speak just 39 percent of all words said in the 90-minute match-up, while the 78-year-old Trump commanded 48 percent. Wi...

US President Joe Biden has dropped out of the presidential race. Photo: AFP / Brendan Smialowski Analysis - US President Joe Biden, who channelled perseverance and grit into a 50-year run in American politics, finally met a foe he could not beat. His opponent in the November presidential election was technically former president Donald Trump, but it was also a much, much harder one to beat - age and perception. The disastrous June debate performance - the worst I have watched in 40 years of viewing these frustrating, fascinating American events - laid bare the harsh reality of age on America's oldest president, and in US politics, image is everything. At 81-years-old - 82 in November - Biden finally recognised today he could not win this one. My own father died in May at 83-years-old, j...

By Graham Fahy for Reuters Edna O'Brien in 1996. Photo: AFP / Jean-Pierre Couderc Edna O'Brien, the author who wrote of her native Ireland in such febrile prose, steeped in sex, love and religious angst, that it sparked national outrage and led to her self-imposed exile, has died aged 93, her agent said on Sunday. Her 1960 literary debut stirred national contempt in then-staunchly Catholic and conservative Ireland, prompting a priest in her hometown to call for it to be burned. The culture minister of the time branded it "a smear on Irish womanhood". But when a selection of her personal papers was added to Ireland's national library in 2021, Culture Minister Catherine Martin cited O'Brien's unique importance as a novelist and chronicler of a country that had once shunned and reviled...