World News

By Catarina Demony, Reuters Mohamed Al Fayed, pictured in 2009. Photo: AFP / Ben Stansall Lawyer calls it "industrial scale abuse" Abuse alleged at Harrods and other parts of business empire Harrods has apologised, Al Fayed had denied accusations More than 400 alleged victims have so far contacted the legal team working on a case against the late Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, who has been accused of sexual abuse and rape, lawyer Dean Armstrong said on Thursday. A BBC documentary in September revealed Al Fayed, who died last year aged 94, sexually abused female staff at his London department store Harrods, forced them to have medical screenings and threatened consequences if they tried to complain. "The sheer scale of abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed, and facilitated by those...

By Jack Queen, Reuters Elon Musk awarded Kristine Fishell with a $1 million cheque during a town hall at the Roxain Theater on 20 October in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo: AFP / Getty Images / Michael Swensen Elon Musk has been ordered to attend a Friday (NZT) hearing in a prosecutor's lawsuit to block the billionaire's US$1 million-a-day (NZ$1.68m) giveaway to registered swing state voters ahead of the U.S. election on 5 November. The hearing before Judge Angelo Foglietta concerns Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner's bid to halt the giveaway less than a week before the tightly contested U.S. presidential election between Republican former president Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Krasner, who championed progressive causes when running for distri...

By Zachary B Wolf for CNN From left: Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Photo: AFP Analysis: For much of the presidential campaign, former president Donald Trump worked to distance himself from Project 2025, the detailed game plan written by conservative activists for a second Trump term. Whether or not his allies will try to implement portions of the controversial plan if he wins the 2024 election is still the topic of some debate. But there is an equally radical and expansive government reformation plan coming out of Trump's own mouth, in which heterodox figures like Robert F Kennedy Jr would be given free rein to "go wild" on the health safety system and Elon Musk would be enabled to, as the tech billionaire said, "start from scratch" with the federal workforce. So w...

US vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are both campaigning hard in the final days of the election campaign, particularly in the pivotal states. Harris will speak at events in North Carolina this morning before heading to a campaign event at the University of Wisconsin where artists Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons and Remi Wolf will perform. Trump was also speaking at a rally in North Carolina today before heading to Wisconsin where he and former NFL quarterback Brett Favre will speak. US president Joe Biden has landed in hot water over his own comments after he appeared to refer to Donald Trump's supporters as "garbage". Follow RNZ's latest coverage here: Source link

An image released by Australian Federal Police of some of the 52 packages labelled as green tea, which turned out to contain methamphetamine Photo: Australian Federal Police A New Zealand woman has been arrested at Sydney Airport after she was caught trying to smuggle 52kg of methamphetamine into Australia. The woman, 23, had been on a flight from Singapore on Monday. She was arrested at Sydney Airport with a New South Wales woman after border officials found 52 packages in luggage labelled as Chinese tea. The packages contained about 1kg of a white substance; initial testing indicated a positive result for methamphetamine. Both women were charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug. They appeared in the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney on 29 October and...

By Jack Kim for Reuters People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test, at a train station in Seoul. Photo: AFP / Jung Yeon-Je Korea fired a suspected long-range ballistic missile towards the sea off its east coast on Thursday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said, a day after Seoul reported the North was making preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile. The launch, at a sharply raised angle, was from an area near the North's capital, Pyongyang, at 7.10am (local time), the Joint Chiefs said in a statement. It did not confirm whether the missile had dropped. "It is believed the North Korea ballistic missile is a long-range ballistic missile fired at a high angle," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in ...

England's test cricket captain Ben Stokes. Photo: PHOTOSPORT England's test cricket captain Ben Stokes said his house was burgled by a masked gang while his wife and children were at home. Stokes was in Pakistan at the time with the England team. APPEAL On the evening of Thursday 17th October a number of masked people burgled my home in the Castle Eden area in the North East. They escaped with jewellery, other valuables and a good deal of personal items. Many of those items have real sentimental value for me and my…— Ben Stokes (@benstokes38) October 30, 2024 The New Zealand-born player posted on social media pictures of the missing items, which included the OBE he received in 2020. "By far the worst thing about this crime is that it was carried out while my wife and two young child...

By Lauren Kent, Sophie Tanno, Taylor Ward and Mauricio Torres, CNN Persons climb on piled up cars following floods in Sedavi, south of Valencia, eastern Spain, on October 30, 2024. Photo: AFP / JOSE JORDAN At least 95 people have been killed by severe flash floods in Spain, according to authorities, as emergency responders scramble to find dozens of missing people. In the worst affected region of Valencia, 92 people were killed, according to Angel Victor Torres, Spain's Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory. Two others died in Castile-La-Mancha, and one person in Andalusia. Among the dead is a 71-year-old British man who died from hypothermia in Malaga, according to the city's mayor, Francisco de la Torre. Authorities said they are working to identify the victims. This...

US vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are both campaigning hard in the final days of the election campaign, particularly in the pivotal states. Harris will speak at events in North Carolina this morning before heading to a campaign event at the University of Wisconsin where artists Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons and Remi Wolf will perform. Trump was also speaking at a rally in North Carolina today before heading to Wisconsin where he and former NFL quarterback Brett Favre will speak. US president Joe Biden has landed in hot water over his own comments after he appeared to refer to Donald Trump's supporters as "garbage". Follow RNZ's latest coverage here: Source link

By Elinya Chenery, ABC Photo: Supplied Authorities have recovered more than 40,000 limited edition Bluey coins that were stolen from a Sydney warehouse earlier this year. A third person has also been arrested over the robbery, with police alleging the 27-year-old Western Sydney woman was the getaway driver during the theft. Christina Vale was arrested at a property in Green Valley about 6.55am on Tuesday (local time) and taken to Liverpool Police Station where she was charged with three counts of aggravated break and enter-commit serious indictable offence, and dispose property-theft, serious indictable offence. Vale appeared before Liverpool Local Court on Tuesday where she was refused bail to return on 28 November. On Monday 12 July, NSW Police received a report that 63,000 Bluey-...