World News

By Logan Smith, CNN The Bucktail Fire in August. Photo: GMUG Fire Information/Facebook Brent Garber, 63, is accused of entering private property to cremate his recently euthanised dog and igniting what became a 7200-acre wildfire that burn for almost two weeks and caused at least US$200,000 (NZ$334,168) in property damage, according to case documents. The Bucktail Fire was reported on private land in the Bucktail drainage about 10km northeast of Nucla near Montrose County Road 25 the morning of 1 August. The fire quickly spread onto federal government-owned land. It was mapped by aircraft at 111 acres in size an hour and a half after it was reported. By 8pm that night, it measured 1760 acres. A first responder who was driving toward the column of smoke that morning saw Garber riding ...

Hundreds of gamblers who self-excluded from Crown Casino were able to circumvent safeguards and place bets undetected. Photo: AFP/ William West Crown Melbourne has been fined $2 million by the Victorian state gambling regulator after allowing 242 people who had self-excluded themselves from gambling to place bets. The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission (VGCCC) said the casino allowed the people to place bets over an 8-month period between October 2023 and May 2024. Self-exclusion is an industry-operated program where individuals may bar themselves from gambling venues to prevent themselves from placing bets. It's an offence in Victoria to allow any excluded person to enter, remain or gamble at the casino. VGCCC Chair Fran Thorn said Crown was obligated to protect people at...

An Ukrainian serviceman walks down a street in the frontline city of Bakhmut, Donetsk (file photo). Photo: ANATOLII STEPANOV / AFP Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff are calling for a new international security system to preclude future instances of armed aggression, as he addressed an online conference on securing peace following Russia's invasion. Andriy Yermak said 66 countries and international organisations had taken part in the conference, devoted to one point of the president's peace plan on ending the more than two-year-old war with Russia. The discussions focused on future instances of escalation and aggression. Zelensky planned to present to parliament this week a "victory plan" - a follow-up to the peace plan he drew up in late 2022 calling for the withdr...

Russian authorities said the vessel was discovered in the waters of the Sea of Okhotsk. File picture. Photo: AFP / Russia's Emergency Ministry Russian authorities said on Tuesday they had rescued a man whose tiny boat drifted for 67 days since August in waters edging the northwestern Pacific, but his brother and nephew died during the ordeal. Social media images showed a thin, bearded man wearing a hooded jacket and orange emergency vest in a catamaran-like sailboat flying a red flag from a small pole. "On Oct 14, a vessel was discovered in the waters of the Sea of Okhotsk," legal authorities in Russia's Far East said on the Telegram messaging app, referring to waters that sprawl over 1.58 mln sq km (610,000 sq miles). "Two people died, one survived," added the regional prosecutor's off...

Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa Photo: Samoa Government Samoa's Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata'afa says a question mark hangs over whether work related to the Manawanui disaster will pause during King Charles' visit for the Commonwealth leaders' meeting. About 60 New Zealand Defence Force personnel and specialists are working alongside local authorities after the sinking of the Royal New Zealand Navy vessel on 5 October. Officials estimate that approximately 200,000 litres of diesel has leaked from the vessel. Fiamē told RNZ Pacific on Tuesday there are no talks of the Manawanui being salvaged this week, as leaders from 56 nations are set to gather in Apia for the 27th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) next Monday. "There is a question that is being posed because whet...

"Australian audiences loved not only his natural charm but also his intellectual curiosity for the world around him," the boss of the ABC says. Photo: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia Veteran journalist and broadcaster George Negus has died at the age of 82 following a battle with Alzheimer's disease, his family said in a statement Negus will be remembered as the founding host of Foreign Correspondent and a mainstay on 60 Minutes, Dateline and other watershed Australian news programmes He is survived by his wife Kirsty Cockburn, their sons Ned and Serge and grandchildren Veteran journalist and broadcaster George Negus has died at the age of 82 following a battle with Alzheimer's disease, his family said in a statement. The statement said Negus "passed away peacefully su...

By Stephen Collinson, CNN Photo: AFP / SAUL LOEB Analysis - Donald Trump is invoking a vision of an extreme new White House term that would transform America and rock the world. And Vice President Kamala Harris has only three weeks to avert it, as she struggles to restore momentum in a neck-and-neck race to Election Day. The Republican nominee is escalating the most toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric in modern US history, warning outsiders with "bad genes" have "invaded" the country after falsely claiming that Haitian migrants here legally were eating pets in Ohio. At a rally in Arizona on Sunday, Trump baselessly suggested that if Harris were elected, "the entire country will be turned into a migrant camp". In Colorado two days earlier, he again vowed to "begin the largest deportation o...

Chris Penk: "the only 'clause' that you'll have to deal with for a while is Santa!" Photo: VNP / Phil Smith Acting Defence Minister Chris Penk has made a statement in Parliament about the HMNZS Manawanui's sinking, and answered questions from other politicians - but rejected some as being "premature". He has rejected suggestions Defence Minister Judith Collins' response had been "dismissive" or that relations with Samoa had been damaged, committed to making the court of inquiry process public "to the greatest extent possible", and shut down questions about the overall cost. Penk stood to make the statement on Tuesday, the first sitting day in Parliament since the ship listed on Saturday 5 October and went beneath the waves the following day, opening the matter for questions and statemen...

By Harry Pearl and Harlyne Joku, BenarNews Local villagers hold a placard as they participate in a gathering near the Porgera Gold Mine in Enga province, Papua New Guinea on 23 September 2024, almost one week after police reinforcements were rushed to the area in a bid to quell tribal violence that shuttered the key gold mine Photo: AFP Papua New Guinea security personnel shot six people - one fatally - and arrested dozens of illegal miners in an operation to crackdown on lawlessness in the country's volatile highlands region, police said. Authorities deployed additional officers and authorised the use of lethal force last month to quell fighting between illegal miners and landowners in the area surrounding the Porgera gold mine in Enga province. Chairman of the Porgera Landowners As...

By Nectar Gan, CNN Qing Bao in her habitat at Dujiangyan Base in Sichuan, China. Photo: AFP - Roshan Patel / Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Two giant pandas are on their way from China to Washington's National Zoo, kicking off a much-awaited return of the beloved bears to the American capital. Bao Li and Qing Bao, both 3-years-old, have left the giant panda research base in Dujiangyan, a city near the bears' native habitat in the mountains of southwest China. They boarded a specially chartered FedEx Boeing 777 cargo jet dubbed the "Panda Express" early Tuesday morning (local time) and took off for Washington. "We have prepared corn buns, bamboo shoots, carrots, water, and medicine to ensure the pandas' needs are met during the flight," the China Wildli...