User Articles

Three killed after plane crashes into paddock

A pilot and two passengers have died after a plane crashed into a paddock and caught alight. Emergency services were called to the crash in Tinamba West in Victoria’s East Gippsland. Police were told the aircraft was circling the area before it crashed and set on fire. The pilot and two passengers, who were the only occupants onboard and are yet to be formally identified, died at the scene.

Reuters

Security

Plane hit with bullet at take-off

A Southwest Airlines plane preparing for departure at Dallas Love Field airport was struck by a bullet and had to return to the gate, the airline has said in a statement. “Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was set to depart for Indianapolis when...

Reuters

Philippines

Thousands evactuated as super typhoon hits

The Philippines has evacuated tens of thousands of people from their homes and cancelled dozens of flights, as a super typhoon threatened to unleash heavy rains and powerful winds that could trigger floods and storm surges. Packing winds of 185 kph (115 mph), the storm Man-Yi was heading for the eastern part of the main island of Luzon, spurring the weather agency to raise its second-highest alert for the provinces of Catanduanes and Camarines Sur.

Reuters

Trade

Trump aide urges Britain to align with US, not EU

A senior economic adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump says Britain should align itself with the United States on trade rather than pursue closer ties with the European Union. Speaking to BBC radio, Stephen Moore said the EU had a “socialist model” and suggested the US would be less interested in a free trade deal with Britain if the government put its economic relations with the EU ahead of those with the US.

Reuters

Ukraine

Zelensky hopes to end war next year through diplomacy

President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, and he plans to meet with President-elect Donald Trump as soon as he takes office to discuss a road to ending the conflict. In a radio interview, Zelensky conceded that the battlefield situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and Russia was making advances. He said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal.

Reuters

Taiwan

7 hours ago

Taiwanese rep invites Biden to visit

Taiwan’s representative at an Asia-Pacific summit has met US President Joe Biden and invited him to visit Taiwan in the near future, with the two men having a “lively” exchange of views, the island’s delegation to the summit says. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is one of the few international meetings both Taiwan and China take part it, though Taiwan does not send its president, given China’s objections. Beijing views the island as its own territory with no right to state-to-state relations.

Reuters

7 hours ago

Pacific

World’s largest coral discovered in Solomons

Scientists have discovered the world’s largest coral, which can be seen from space, in the Solomon Islands. The mega coral is three times larger than the previous record-holder and is believed to be around 300 years old. Scientists from the National Geographic Pristine Seas team were researching the health of the Solomon Islands’ ocean environments when they made the discovery. When underwater cinematographer Manu San Felix first saw the mega coral, he thought it was a shipwreck due to its large size.

Reuters

Weather

Dangerous storm threatens Central America

Wading through waist-deep water, residents along the northern coast of Honduras have trudged through the streets carrying their belongings and pets, as heavy rains from Tropical Storm Sara caused widespread flooding across the area. Sara churned menacingly near the Caribbean coast of Honduras, close to beach resorts and ancient Maya ruins popular with tourists, as the storm also took aim at neighbouring Belize and Guatemala. The US National Hurricane Centre forecast between 15 and 25 inches (38-63 cm) of rain in northern Honduras over the next few days, with up to 35 inches striking isolated areas.

Reuters

Canada

16 hours ago

Canada Post workers go on strike

About 55,000 Canada Post workers have gone on strike after their union said it had failed to reach a pay deal with the postal operator in the run-up to the holiday season. Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, who has twice this year moved to end work disputes in other sectors, made clear he was not considering another intervention for the time being. The union is demanding wage increases in line with inflation, cost-of-living adjustment payments to be rolled into the basic wage rate, and safe working conditions. The union had issued a three-day strike notice earlier this week.

Reuters

16 hours ago

Ukraine

18 hours ago

Call to Putin opens a ‘Pandora’s box’

Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time in nearly two years as the German leader gears up for a snap election and Europe waits to hear Donald Trump’s plan for ending the war in Ukraine. In a phone call that was swiftly criticised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Scholz urged Putin to pull his forces out of Ukraine and begin talks with Kyiv that would open the way for a “just and lasting peace”, the German government said. The Kremlin said the conversation had come at Berlin’s request, and that Putin had told Scholz any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must take Russian security interests into account and reflect “new territorial realities”.

Reuters

18 hours ago

France

19 hours ago

Le Pen allies decry witch-hunt

Allies of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen have accused the judiciary of a witch-hunt and undue meddling in democracy after prosecutors requested she face an obligatory five-year ban from public office if convicted of misusing European Union...

Reuters

19 hours ago

Middle East

Israel hits Beirut as truce looms

An Israeli airstrike has flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junction, shaking the Lebanese capital as Israel kept up its intensified bombardment of Hezbollah-controlled areas of the city. One of several airstrikes, the attack struck near the Tayouneh junction in an area where the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit.

Reuters

France

Ukrainians train for trench warfare near WW1 battlefields

This scene could be 3,000 km away in Ukraine’s Donbass region, but instead some 2,000 Ukrainian conscripts and veterans are training in the muddy fields of France’s eastern Marne region where 110 years ago French and German armies hammered each...

Reuters

Military

RAF jets tracked Russian bomber

British jets have tracked a Russian aircraft flying close to the country’s airspace, the Royal Air Force says, days after the Royal Navy also detected Russian military ships passing through the English Channel. “Our adversaries should be in no doubt of our steadfast determination and formidable ability to protect the UK,“ Luke Pollard, British minister for the armed forces, said in a statement.

Reuters

Germany

Pressure on Scholz to forgo reelection bid

Olaf Scholz, Germany’s least popular chancellor on record, is facing growing calls within his Social Democrats (SPD) to step aside and let his Defence Minister Boris Pistorius instead lead the centre-left party into next year’s federal election. Germany is set to hold a snap election on February 23 after Scholz’s ideologically diverse three-way coalition of SPD, Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) collapsed last week following months of infighting.

Reuters

Economy

‘EU trade rebuild is vital’: BoE

Britain should stand up for free trade and rebuild ties with the European Union as the global economy fragments, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has said in a speech that cast an eye towards Donald Trump’s White House return. In his annual Mansion House speech to financial services leaders in London, Bailey said a commitment to open trade was vital to boost weak investment in Britain and restore productivity growth, along with an unlocking of capital from businesses and pension funds, something planned by finance minister Rachel Reeves.

Reuters

South America

Irreversible damage done to ancient Chilean geoglyphs

Over a thousand years ago, the hundreds of giant geoglyphs carved into the desert in northern Chile were a bustling scene. They marked sources of water in the vast arid landscape and were where locals came together to trade skins, animals and fish. Now the carvings are scarred with hundreds of tire tracks from motorcycles and off-road vehicles tearing through the art creations in the landscape and permanently disfiguring them.

Reuters

Koreas

South opposition leader convicted of election violation

A South Korean court has convicted main opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung on charges of violating the election law, handing him a one-year prison sentence suspended for two years, the Yonhap news agency says. Lee said after the hearing that he would appeal the court’s decision. “I will be appealing. Beginning with the basic facts, it is a conclusion that is difficult to accept,“ he said.

Reuters