World News

Photo: AFP Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu have met in an effort to close the remaining "gaps" in the push for a Gaza ceasefire deal, the White House said. The meeting at the White House came a day after Netanyahu gave a fiery speech to Congress as thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside. US Vice-President Kamala Harris later met Netanyahu and said she had voiced "serious concerns" over casualties in Gaza. The Israeli prime minister faces pressure both at home and abroad to bring an end to the Israel-Gaza war, now in its ninth month. He said he had known the US president for 40 years - and that Biden had known every Israeli PM over the last half a century. "From a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish-American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public serv...

By David Ljunggren and Nia Williams, Reuters Visitors evacuate Jasper National Park in Canada on July 22, 2024, due to a wildfire. Photo: LE MINH KHUE / AFP A raging wildfire has devastated the western Canadian tourist town of Jasper, potentially destroying up to 50 percent of structures, and firefighters were working on Thursday to save as many buildings as possible, authorities said. Jasper is in the middle of mountainous Jasper National Park, in the province of Alberta. The town and the park, which draw more than two million tourists a year, were evacuated on Monday, when officials estimated there were up to 10,000 people in the town and a further 15,000 visitors in the park. "There is no denying that this is the worst nightmare for any community," Alberta premier Danielle Smith t...

An oil spill containment boom being prepared to be on standby for deployment at a port in Limay, Bataan. Photo: Jam Sta Rosa / AFP By Annabelle Liang and Flora Drury, BBC News The Philippines is in a race against time to contain an oil spill after a tanker carrying close to 1.5 million litres of industrial fuel capsized and sank off the country's coast, officials say. There are fears the "enormous" spill - which is already stretching out over several kilometres - could reach the shore of the capital, Manila, coast guard spokesman Rear Admiral Armando Balilo told reporters. The ship was one of two which sank in the region on Thursday, with the second going down just off Taiwan's south-western coast. Both Taiwan and the Philippines are seeing large amounts of rain as Typhoon Gaemi moves t...

Governor of East Sepik Allan Bird said violence in the country had been getting worse during the past 10 years. Photo: ANDREW KUTAN Violent attacks on three remote villages in Papua New Guinea's (PNG) north has reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 children, while several people were forced to flee after attackers set fire to their homes, the United Nations said. "I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights," UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said in a statement released on Wednesday. The death toll could rise to more than 50 as PNG authorities search for missing people, Turk said. Citing Provincial Police Commander in East Sepik James Baugen said, "It was a very ter...

Jennifer Aniston has criticised Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate for calling Democrats a "bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives". Photo: SHAUN CURRY/AFP By Bonnie McLaren, culture reporter, BBC News Jennifer Aniston has criticised Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, for resurfaced comments calling Democrats a "bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives". The Friends actress, 55, posted a 2021 interview with Vance that has been widely shared since his selection as Mr Trump's running mate for November's presidential election. "I truly can't believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States," she wrote on Instagram. "All I can say is… Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one d...

A member of the Australian 2nd Light Horse Brigade on active duty in the Middle East, 1917. Photo: Public Domain In December 1918, New Zealand and Australian soldiers murdered upwards of 40 Arab civilians in a Palestinian village. But more than 110 years later, we still don't know exactly who did it, or why. In a new season of RNZ's Black Sheep podcast, we investigate what one military historian describes as "by far the worst war crime ever committed by New Zealand military personnel" - The Surafend massacre - and other allegations of war crimes against Anzacs in the Middle East and North Africa. "They ​got ​their ​heads ​together, ​the ​New ​Zealand and ​Australians, and they ​went ​out ​to ​this ​village, ​and ​they ​went ​through ​it ​with ​the ​bayonet." These are the words of Edwar...

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, pictured with Lachlan Murdoch in 2017. Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images via AFP Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is engaged in a legal battle against three of his children to ensure that his eldest son and chosen successor, Lachlan Murdoch, will remain in charge of his media empire, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Murdoch is trying to expand Lachlan Murdoch's voting power in the Murdoch Family Trust to secure a majority and ensure that he cannot be challenged by the siblings, the report said, citing a sealed court document. The Reno, Nevada-based family trust holds the family's shares in Murdoch's vast collection of television networks and newspapers through the companies News Corp and Fox Corp. Lachlan Murdoch is chairperson of News Corp, whose publica...

Searchers found the wreck, largely intact and sitting upright on the sea floor, 170m below the surface. Photo: Supplied / CSIRO By Tiffany Turnbull for the BBC Fifty-five years after it sank, killing 21 men, Australia has found the shipwreck of the MV Noongah. The 71m freighter was carrying steel off the coast of New South Wales when it ran into stormy weather in 1969, sparking one of the biggest maritime searches in Australian history. Five of the 26 crewmen were plucked from the water in the hours after the vessel sank, but only one body was ever recovered from those lost at sea. The location of the wreck has now been confirmed by Australia's science agency, using high resolution seafloor mapping and video footage. Only minutes after sending a distress signal on 25 August, the ship ha...

Investors say Elon Musk's company has worrying profit margins. Photo: SLAVEN VLASIC / AFP Tesla shares tumbled 12 percent on Wednesday local time, evaporating almost US$100 billion in stock market value after CEO Elon Musk's talk of humanoid robots and driverless taxis failed to comfort investors worried about the electric car maker's shrinking profit margins. Tesla posted its lowest quarterly profit margin in five years late on Tuesday local time, with earnings per share missing estimates for the fourth consecutive quarter. It was the biggest one-day percentage drop in Tesla's stock since 2020, and it left Tesla's market capitalization at just under US$700 billion, down from over US$1 trillion in 2021. Still the world's most valuable car maker, Tesla's valuation relies on investor expe...

In this image courtesy of Le Minh Khue, visitors evacuate Jasper National Park in Canada on 22 July 2024, due to a wildfire. Photo: LE MINH KHUE / AFP A wildfire reached the Canadian town of Jasper today, one of hundreds ravaging the western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, as firefighters battled to save key facilities such as the Trans Mountain Pipeline, authorities said. Wildfires burning uncontrolled across the region include 433 in British Columbia and 176 in Alberta, more than a dozen of them in the area of Fort McMurray, an oil sands hub. The pipeline, which can carry 890,000 barrels per day of oil from Edmonton to Vancouver, runs through a national park in the Canadian Rockies near the picturesque tourist town, from which about 25,000 people were forced to evacuate on ...