World News

By Pavel Polityuk, Tom Balmforth and Yuliia Dysa, Reuters A house where the owner was killed by a Russian missile attack in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, on 26 August. Photo: Dmytro Smolienko /NurPhoto via AFP Russia attacked Ukraine with more than 200 missiles and drones, killing seven people and striking energy facilities nationwide, Kyiv said, while neighbouring NATO member Poland reported a drone had probably entered its airspace. Power cuts and water supply outages were reported in many areas, including parts of Kyiv, as officials said the attack - 2.5 years into the war - targeted power or other critical infrastructure across the country. Russia stepped up its strikes on the Ukrainian power grid in March in what Kyiv has said looked like a concerted effort to degrade the sy...

Boats return to Porticello harbour near Palermo, Sicily, bringing bodies ashore on 21 August, 2024, two days after the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian sank. Photo: AFP Italian prosecutors will investigate the captain of the superyacht belonging to British tech magnate Mike Lynch that sank off Sicily last week during an intense storm, killing Lynch and six other people, Italian media reports said on Monday. Reuters was not able to independently verify the decision. Being placed under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow. James Cutfield, a 51-year old New Zealand national, is being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, the dailies La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera said. Magistrates spoke to Cutfield on Sunday...

By Matt Neal of the ABC Hanson was huge for a moment thanks to MMMBop. Photo: Wikipedia Hanson. Toni Basil. The Knack. Baha Men. Minnie Riperton. Chumbawumba. If you know these acts, reading their names has probably started a song playing in your head. For most people, it will be the same song. MMMBop. Mickey. My Sharona. Who Let The Dogs Out? Loving You. Tubthumping. This is the magic and the curse of the one-hit wonder - that your name is instantly recognisable and forever connected to a single piece of music, but that's as far as your career extends in the minds of the masses. But who is the ultimate one-hit wonder? And can we use maths, Spotify data and good old-fashioned common sense to answer that question? Defining a one-hit wonder No musician wants to be a one-hit wonder - t...

By Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Steve Holland for Reuters Palestinians inspect the destruction of an Israeli airstrike on a residential neighbourhood in Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza, on August 8, 2024. Photo: AFP / Saeed Jaras There was no agreement on Sunday in the Gaza ceasefire talks that took place in Cairo, with neither Hamas nor Israel agreeing to several compromises presented by mediators, two Egyptian security sources said, casting doubt on the chances of success in the latest US-backed effort to end the 10-month old war. A senior US official, however, described the talks as "constructive", saying they were conducted in a spirit on all sides to reach "a final and implementable agreement". "The process will continue over the coming days through working groups to further addre...

update The earthquake was 72km from Pangai. Photo: USGS / Screenshot A magnitude 6.9 earthquake has struck the Tonga region, the US Geological Survey is reporting. The quake hit about 12:30pm local time. The USGS reports the epicentre was 72km west of Pangai at a depth of 106km. The US Tsunami Warning System says no tsunami was expected, Reuters reports. The quake was initially reported as a magnitude 6.6 but later upgraded. - RNZ / Reuters Source link

By Lewis Jackson for Reuters Photo: 123RF Is your boss texting you on the weekend? Work email pinging long after you've left for home? Australian employees can now ignore those and other intrusions into home life thanks to a new "right to disconnect" law designed to curb the creep of work emails and calls into personal lives. The new rule, which came into force on Monday, means employees, in most cases, cannot be punished for refusing to read or respond to contacts from their employers outside work hours. Supporters say the law gives workers the confidence to stand up against the steady invasion of their personal lives by work emails, texts and calls, a trend that has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic scrambled the division between home and work. "Before we had digital technolog...

By Velvet Winter, ABC Former US President Donald Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris. Photo: AFP Barely hours after Joe Biden announced he was stepping away from the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket to make way for Kamala Harris, musician Charli xcx sent out a simple tweet. Three words. kamala IS brat— Charli (@charli_xcx) July 22, 2024 For many, the tweet initially seemed inconsequential. But for those whose timelines had been drenched in a certain shade of green for weeks prior, it was a call to arms and a signal that the battleground for youth votes would be held in the pop culture arenas. And both the Harris and Trump campaigns have leaned into celebrity endorsements, high-profile interviews and social media. Here's how they stack up. National party conventions ...

A Hezbollah drone is intercepted by Israeli air forces over northern Israel on Sunday. Photo: AFP / JALAA MAREY Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones against Israel on Sunday in retaliation for the assassination of a commander in Beirut, the Iranian-backed movement said. The Israel military said it had thwarted a much larger attack with pre-emptive strikes. What are Hezbollah's origins? Iran's Revolutionary Guards founded Hezbollah in 1982 during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, part of Tehran's effort to export its 1979 Islamic Revolution and fight Israeli forces that had invaded Lebanon in 1982. The group has risen from a shadowy faction to a heavily armed force with big sway in Lebanon and the region. Western governments including the United States designate it a terrorist gr...

An image grab taken from Hezbollah's al-Manar TV on August 25, 2024, shows Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah giving a televised address from an undisclosed location. Photo: AFP / Al-Manar Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday that his group would assess the impact of its rocket and drone attack on Israeli military targets earlier in the day before determining whether it would carry out further attacks to avenge a slain commander. The leader of the Lebanese armed group said in a televised address that it had been able to carry out its attack "as planned," denying statements by the Israeli military that its pre-emptive strikes had stopped a wider attack by the group. Read more: Nasrallah, speaking about 12 hours after the most intense exchange of fire between I...

Photo: Luca Pferdmenges At the age of 15, German man Luca Pferdmenges began ticking off a list with the intention of visiting every country in the world. Now, after turning 23 on Saturday, he has visited 190 countries out of a possible 195. He has three million followers on TikTok. But more than that, Pferdmenges is on the regularly updated list of the world's top jugglers. He has broken four Guinness Book of World Records, including becoming the first person ever to juggle 16 balls with a partner. He has taught children to juggle around the world, even in places like Afghanistan, and he has published books on both travel and juggling. He told Sunday Morning, from Buenos Aires in Argentina, that he is able to travel the world by having a "very tight budget". "I've been doing it full-ti...