The Israeli army says it has discovered a tunnel running 1.7km (1 mile) from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The tunnel led from a house to a site close to a kibbutz, Ein Hashlosha, and could have been used to carry out attacks on civilians, a spokesman said. Israel has responded by halting the transfer of all construction materials to Gaza. Restrictions on the private sector were lifted last […]
The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, has warned that the United States is just “days away from a very dangerous moment” because of the government’s borrowing crisis. He urged US policymakers to reach a deal to raise the government’s debt ceiling before Thursday’s deadline. The US Treasury will start to run short of funds if no agreement is reached for it to borrow on financial markets. Mr […]
Indian disaster teams have begun a relief operation after Cyclone Phailin crashed into eastern areas, forcing up to one million people to flee. Officials are assessing the damage and providing food to hundreds of thousands who spent the night in shelters. The cyclone wrecked many coastal homes, uprooted trees and blocked roads in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states. Five deaths have so far been linked to the cyclone, far fewer […]
STORY HIGHLIGHTS Erich Priebke was under house arrest at the time of his death He was sentenced to life in prison for war crimes He was convicted for his role in the massacre of 335 people in 1944 Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, who was serving a life sentence for his role in the massacre of 335 people in Italy in 1944, has died, his lawyer said Friday. Priebke, 100, […]
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the body overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee said it was in honour of the OPCW’s “extensive work to eliminate chemical weapons”. The OPCW, based in The Hague, was established to enforce the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. OPCW director general Ahmet Uzumcu said the award was a “great honour” and would spur […]
Libyan PM Ali Zeidan has called for “rationality and wisdom” after being freed from the custody of militiamen. He was abducted from a Tripoli hotel and held for several hours by armed men whose identity has yet to be confirmed. In a cabinet meeting, the PM thanked “real revolutionaries” who took part in a security operation to free him. The motive of the abduction is unclear but some militias […]
Why a probe passing our planet on its way to Jupiter might end a decades-old mystery, and reveal something completely new about gravity. You may not see it, but sometime today, a spacecraft whizzing 350 miles (560km) above Earth is going to use our planet to slingshot its way towards another one. In the process, a group of scientists are hoping the craft will help reveal a mystery that has […]
Scientists say they have proven the existence of the Higgs boson — a never-before-seen subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe. Since 2012 researchers have made great strides in the hunt for the so-called “God particle” at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory are looking for particles that slip into existence when subatomic particles crash […]
As the U.S. government shutdown enters its second week, it is not just Americans wondering when the stalemate will be over – around the world, politicians and commentators have been weighing in with their take on how the U.S. got here, what happens next, and whether their own countries should be worried. GPS Digital Producer Jason Miks selects some of the highlights. U.S. has been living far beyond its tax […]
Accounts of the 14-year-old’s exorcism at a house in Missouri (pictured) in 1949 are based on diary extracts by Father Raymond Bishop, one of the Jesuit priests who performed the exorcism. One diary entry, dated 11 April 1949, reads: ‘At midnight, the Fathers planned to give (Roland) Holy Communion, but Satan would have no part of it. The word HELLO was printed on his chest and thigh.’ It was a […]
