World News

Rome's Trevi Fountain is a popular destination for tourists. Photo: CC BY 3.0 Rome is considering limiting access to the Trevi Fountain, one of its busiest monuments, ahead of an expected bumper year for tourism in the Eternal City, city council officials say. The Italian capital is preparing to host the 2025 Jubilee, a year-long Roman Catholic event expected to attract 32 million tourists and pilgrims. Under the draft plans, visits to the fountain would require a prior reservation, with fixed time slots and a limited number of people allowed to access the steps around it. "For Romans we are thinking of making it free, while non-residents would be asked to make a symbolic contribution, one or two euros (NZ$1.80 - $3.60)," Rome's tourism councillor Alessandro Onorato told Thursday's Il M...

By Anja Guder, Reuters Police officers seen in Munich after a man was shot dead near the Israeli consulate. Photo: AFP / Peter Kneffel German police shot dead a man in an exchange of fire near the Israeli consulate and a Nazi history museum in Munich on Thursday, state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said. "It was a male person and we know that he acted here with a long-barrelled gun," a Munich police spokesperson said. "Due to the intervention of the police, the perpetrator was stopped and probably died at the scene," Herrmann told reporters. There were no indications of other suspects or incidents in the Bavarian state capital, Munich police said on X. The incident occurred on the anniversary of the 1972 attack at the Olympic Games in Munich in which Palestinian Black September ...

The Pentagon directs the US-led Olympic Defender space project. Photo: AFP/ Brendan Smialowski New Zealand has accepted a US invitation to join a top-level group that aims to deter hostile actors in space and reduce space debris. The US military made the invite in April to join Operation Olympic Defender, and extended it to France and Germany, too. Minister of Defence Judith Collins said New Zealand would gain experience from sending a liaison officer to US Space Command for two years. This "shows New Zealand's willingness to uphold the norms of responsible behaviour in space", she said in a statement on Thursday. The move will bring New Zealand in line with the Five Eyes intelligence grouping as Australia, the UK and Canada are already members of Olympic Defender. Germany and France re...

Uganda's Rebecca Cheptegei, left, competes in the women's marathon final during the World Athletics Championships in Budapest on 26 August, 2023. Photo: FERENC ISZA / AFP Ugandan marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who competed in last month's Paris Olympics, has died after being attacked by her boyfriend, the head of the country's Olympics committee said on Thursday. "We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei ... following a vicious attack by her boyfriend," Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X. More to come... - Reuters Source link

By Sarah N Lynch, Andrew Goudsward and Christopher Bing, Reuters A Russia's state-controlled Russia Today (RT) television broadcast van is seen parked in front of St. Basil's Cathedral. Photo: AFP US Justice Department charges two RT employees with money laundering RT allegedly paid $10 million to a Tennessee company for divisive content RT and Russian officials deny accusations of election interference The US has filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state media network RT for what officials said was a scheme to hire an American company to produce online content to influence the 2024 presidential election. Justice Department officials said the two employees used shell companies and fake personas to pay US$10 million (NZ$16.1) to an unnamed Tennessee compa...

Photo: AFP/Screenshot Australian breakdancer Rachel Gunn, better known as B-Girl Raygun, has not been able to break again after copping a huge backlash for her performance in Paris. In her first interview since the event a month ago, Gunn told The Project Australia she was still processing the world's reaction - she has not been able to watch footage of her Olympic outing in which she lost all three of her round robin battles, where breaking made its Olympic debut. "I got some mental health support pretty quickly and I also went off social media, I went off the internet. But it's pretty up and down, it's just hard to process, it's still pretty hard to process," Gunn told host Waleed Aly via a video interview on Wednesday night. Gunn, a 36-year-old Australian university lecturer, was pill...

By Renju Jose, Reuters Photo: 123rf Australia's centre-left government said on Thursday it planned to introduce targeted artificial intelligence rules including human intervention and transparency amid a rapid rollout of AI tools by businesses and in everyday life. Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic unveiled 10 new voluntary guidelines on AI systems and said the government has opened a month-long consultation over whether to make them mandatory in the future in high-risk settings. "Australians know AI can do great things but people want to know there are protections in place if things go off the rails," Husic said in a statement. "Australians want stronger protections on AI, we've heard that, we've listened." The report containing the guidelines said it was critical to enable huma...

By Nadia Mitsopoulos, ABC News Photo: 123rf A Perth bodybuilder who spent 15 hours unconscious in a gym shower without anyone noticing has died. Giuliano Pirone, 33, suffered a brain injury and had been in an induced coma, on life support, at Joondalup hospital for two weeks. He had been working out at a 24-hour gym in Wanneroo when he felt unwell, made his way to a shower cubicle and collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday, 20 August. After they were unable to contact him, his family reported Pirone missing. Police located Pirone at the gym at 10.30pm by pinging his mobile phone and had to break the shower door down to get to him. They found him lying on the floor under cold running water. Police performed CPR until an ambulance arrived. Pirone did not regain consciousness and an MRI...

By David Ljunggren, Reuters Justin Trudeau. Photo: Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suffered an unexpected blow on Wednesday when the small party helping keep his minority Liberal government in power withdrew its automatic support, forcing him to attempt new alliances to govern. Promising to continue governing and pushing through social programs, Trudeau dismissed talk of early elections after the left-leaning New Democratic Party's leader Jagmeet Singh said he was "ripping up" a deal struck between the two men in 2022. But the move leaves Trudeau reliant on support from other opposition lawmakers to survive confidence votes in the lower chamber of Parliament at a time when polls show he will lose badly if an election were held no...

An inquiry laid most of the responsibility for the disaster on companies involved in the maintenance and refit of the apartment tower. Photo: DANIEL LEAL/AFP A public inquiry into the devastating 2017 London Grenfell Tower blaze on Wednesday blamed the disaster on failings by government, the construction industry and most of all the firms involved in fitting the exterior with flammable cladding. Seventy-two people died when the fire ripped through the 23-storey social housing block in one of the richest areas of west London during the early hours of 14 June, 2017. It was Britain's deadliest blaze in a residential building since World War II. In its long-awaited final report, the inquiry laid most of the responsibility for the disaster on companies involved in the maintenance and refit o...