World News

Floral tributes and soft toys are laid following a vigil in Southport, northwest England, on 30 July 2024, a day after a deadly child knife attack. Photo: ROLAND LLOYD PARRY / AFP "Thugs" were to blame for the violence that saw 39 police officers injured in Southport, the town's MP has said. Unrest broke out in the Merseyside town hours after a vigil to remember the victims of Monday's knife attack at a dance school in which three young girls were killed. Officers were pelted with bricks, a police van was set on fire, and eight officers were seriously hurt, Merseyside Police said. MP Patrick Hurley described the violence - close to a mosque - as "horrific". Hurley told BBC's Radio 4 Today programme that the "riot" was "led by people from outside the town". Police said the violence was b...

Photo: Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Green New Deal Network/AFP By Andrew Hay, Reuters At least 973 Native American children died at Indian Boarding Schools from 1819 to 1969, according to a federal report that calls on the US government to apologise for the 150-year-long forced assimilation policy used to separate children from families and destroy tribal identity. Many of the children who died were buried at 65 former schools across the country in at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites, according to a US Department of the Interior study released on Tuesday. It was the second and final report on the schools commissioned by US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the United States' first Native American cabinet secretary. Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Pueblo of Laguna tribe...

By Tiffanie Turnbull for BBC Photo: 123rf Babies with peanut allergies in Australia will be offered treatment to build immunity to the potentially life-threatening condition, under a world-first program. Supervised by select paediatric hospitals, eligible babies will be given gradually increasing doses of peanut powder each day for at least two years, to reduce sensitivity. Oral immunotherapy has been available in clinical trials and some specialist allergy centres around the globe, but this is the first time it has ever been adopted as a national model of care for peanut allergies. Australia is often dubbed the "allergy capital of the world", with one in 10 infants diagnosed with food sensitivities. Peanut allergy affects about 3 percent of Australians at 12 months old and - unlike o...

The United Nations is reporting human rights violations on Palestinian detainees. Photo: JAAFAR ASHTIYEH / AFP By Emma Farge for Reuters Thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly removed from Gaza, sometimes from bomb shelters, and dragged into detention in Israel where some have been tortured and dozens have died, according to a UN human rights office report on Tuesday. Many of those seized in Gaza since the war began on 7 October were taken at checkpoints as they fled Israel's military offensive or from the schools and hospitals where they were sheltering, said the 23-page report based primarily on interviews with released detainees and other victims and witnesses. Often, they were blindfolded and shackled before being transported to Israel and placed in "cage-like" military centre...

By Simon Smale, ABC Belarusian athletes, seen here at the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, will not be flying their flag at the Paris Olympics. Photo: BEN STANSALL / AFP Watching the Olympic Games often boils down to understanding who is representing whom in each event. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a helpful code of acronyms that it uses to help determine who is who. Most of the time these codes are pretty obvious: AUS is the three-letter code that represents Australia, PNG is Papua New Guinea, NZL is New Zealand, for example. Others can be slightly more confusing: CHI relates to Chile while CHN is China, and Moldova is MDA with the Maldives represented by MDV. Even more confusingly, the IOC lists Bahrain as BRN, which is what the International Organization for Standardi...

Hannah and Daniel Neeleman with their eight children. Photo: Ballerina Farm/Instagram Two days ago, Hannah Neeleman, a Mormon mother of eight children, posted a video on TikTok to her two million followers. It was date night and Neeleman and her husband, Daniel, walked through the long grass in between mooing cows on their Utah ranch. "When we started our farm, I was swept up in the beauty of learning to make food from scratch," said Neeleman in a voiceover as she and her husband kissed and cuddled their baby. "It's the world we created and I couldn't love it more," she added. It seemed like perfect eye candy for the trad wife trend, where modern women take on the role of traditional wives. But for many followers, the video felt like a response to a recent profile in the Times of London...

Ismael Haniyeh, Palestinian leader of the militant group Hamas, surrounded by lawmakers flashes the victory sign during the swearing in ceremony for the new Iranian President, at the parliament in Tehran on July 30, 2024. Photo: AFP Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran on Wednesday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said in separate statements. The Islamist faction mourned the death of Haniyeh, who it said was killed in "a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran". Hanieh attended Iran's new president's swearing in ceremony on Tuesday. "Early this morning, the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was struck, resulting in his and one of his body guards' martyrdom. The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon," ...

By Ahmed Rasheed, Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart, Reuters Humvees and vehicles of the combined Iraqi forces and Hashed Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization units) inside the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, on 25 August, 2017. Photo: AFP / Ahmad Al-Rubaye The United States on has carried out a strike in Iraq in self defence, US officials told Reuters, as regional tensions rose after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut that Israel said killed Hezbollah's most senior commander. Iraqi police and medical sources said the strike inside a base south of Baghdad used by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) killed four members of the group that contains several Iran-aligned armed militias, and wounded four others. In a statement after the blasts, the Popular Mobilization Forces made no accusation abou...

Right before she made the break that sealed an Olympic gold medal, Sarah Hirini took a heavy knock to her face. Pinned down on their own line and clinging to a 14-12 lead, Hirini broke through the Canadian defensive line and charged downfield. She did not have the legs to go end-to-end, but the Black Ferns managed to get it wide and in the next phase of play Hirini threw the last pass to Stacey Waaka who slid in for the match winning try. It's likely the Black Ferns Sevens co-captain was carrying a broken cheekbone through those match-winning plays. Hirini was sent for an assessment soon after receiving her second successive gold medal with the champion Sevens team. It was just another brutal injury Hirini sustained for her team. An inspirational leader in the Black Ferns Sevens team, S...

Pascal's popular book series about identical US twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. Photo: Random House By Emma Saunders of the BBC Sweet Valley High author Francine Pascal has died at the age of 92. Her agent Amy Bekower told the BBC she died on Sunday. Pascal died of lymphoma in hospital in New York, her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal confirmed to the New York Times. Pascal's popular book series about identical US twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield was a hit around the world with its tales of teen romance, friendship and sibling rivalry. Set in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley, the first book from the series was published in 1983, with 180 more produced over the following 20 years. There were also several spin-offs, including Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley Univ...