Shots fired in Hong Kong as violence flares

Philip Wen 1:06 PM   Hong Kong police fired "warning shots" in a bid to contain hundreds of surging rioters as Lunar New Year celebrations descended into a night of chaos.

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More survivors rescued from Taiwan rubble

Eight-year-old Lin Su-Chin rescued from a collapsed building after an earthquake in Tainan.

Philip Wen 3:36 PM   Four trapped survivors - including an eight-year-old girl and a woman found under the dead body of her husband - have been rescued alive, but the prospect of finding more survivors is diminishing.

Bernie Sanders on fire in New Hampshire

Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign stop at the Palace Theatre in ...

Nick O'Malley 12:19 PM   Vermont senator who advocates a political revolution well ahead of Hillary Clinton on eve of primary vote.

Merkel outraged over Russian air strikes

Outraged: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is appalled by the suffering of tens of thousands of Syrians through bomb ...

Russian air strikes in Syria amount to an ethnic massacre, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says.

How a massive 'Ponzi scheme' lured investors

Ding Ning, owner of Ezubao, speaks during an interrogation in an unknown location in an image taken from CCTV footage.

Ezubao advertised on China's government-built bullet trains, and its executives schmoozed with state media big shots and Communist Party cadres. 

Latest world news

Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and what Caddyshack can tell us about them

Vulgarian real estate magnate: Rodney Dangerfield as Al Czervik in the 1980 film Caddyshack.

Nick O'Malley 3:50 PM   The 1980 comedy tells us something about the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush.

4000-passenger cruise ship inexplicably sails into Atlantic mega-storm

Anthem of the Seas.

Angela Fritz 3:37 PM   At the height of the storm, waves were breaking over the tops of the life boats and the whole ship was listing to almost 45 degrees.

Rogue intelligence officer directing elephant poachers in Tanzania

An elephant roaming near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Willy Lowry 2:06 PM   An investigation into the death of a British helicopter pilot who was looking for poachers near Serengeti National Park has uncovered a criminal poaching ring led by a rogue intelligence officer, the Tanzanian authorities have said.

Shots fired in Hong Kong as violence flares

A rioter is taken away by police on a street in Mong Kok district of Hong Kong.

Philip Wen 1:06 PM   Hong Kong police fired "warning shots" in a bid to contain hundreds of surging rioters as Lunar New Year celebrations descended into a night of chaos.

What is Shrove Tuesday?

A last day of indulgence before Lent.

11:48 AM   Shrove Tuesday is a day of feasting before Christians traditionally move into a period of fasting in the lead up to Easter.

Russian firepower helps Syrian forces push towards Turkey border

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in December.

Humeyra Pamuk 11:33 AM   The Syrian army has advanced towards the Turkish border in a major offensive backed by Russia and Iran that rebels say now threatens the future of their nearly five-year-old insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad.

What is Lent, when is it held and how long does it go for?

Lent is a time of self-reflection before Easter.

11:17 AM   In the Christian calendar, Lent is the six-week period leading up to Easter which is characterised by prayer, fasting and abstinence.

Nepal ethnic minorities call off trading blockade

Local residents of Nepal and India cross a bridge at Birgunj on Friday. Vehicles have passed through the main border ...

Gopal Sharma 9:55 AM   Nepal's ethnic minority groups have lifted a four-month-old blockade along a major trading point with India, saying it didn't want ordinary people to suffer anymore, but vowed to carry on with its campaign against the new constitution.

Islamic State: Is Australia too worried? One Israeli expert

The flag of Islamic State in an area west of Kirkuk in September.

Do Australians worry too much about the threat of Islamic State? One political scientist thinks so.

Meteorite may have killed someone for the first time in two centuries

This 1.68 kilogram meteorite was tracked and retrieved by Australian scientists in January.

Ishaan Tharoor 8:46 AM   Local authorities in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu are investigating whether the death of a man at a college campus over the weekend was the result of a falling meteorite.

North Korea's new satellite flew over Super Bowl site

A South Korean man watches a TV news  report on North Korea's rocket launch at Seoul Railway Station.

Eric Talmadge 7:07 AM   Here's a bit of Super Bowl trivia: North Korea's newest satellite passed almost right over the stadium just an hour after it ended.

Migrant boat sinks en route to Greece, 27 dead

Migrants in Turkey en route to boats for Greece.

Michele Kambas 4:37 AM   Coastguards have confirmed 27 migrants, 11 of them children, drowned off Turkey's Aegean coast as they tried to reach Greece.

Family's dramatic rescue from car swallowed by sinkhole in Peru

The dramatic rescue as a car disappears into a sinkhole in Peru.

Locals have scrambled to rescue a family of three after their car was swallowed by a five-metre-deep sinkhole in Trujillo, Peru.

After months of restraint, Bill Clinton lets fly at Bernie Sanders

Former President Bill Clinton meets with people after speaking at a rally for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton last ...

Jonathan Martin 2:35 AM   Bill Clinton has uncorked an extended attack on Senator Bernie Sanders, harshly criticising Sanders and his supporters for what he described as inaccurate and "sexist" attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Syrian government is 'exterminating' its population: UN

Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, fronts the media to talk about the UN ...

Stephanie Nebehay 1:50 AM   Detainees held by the Syrian government are dying on a massive scale, amounting to a state policy of "extermination" of the civilian population, United Nations investigators say.

Wild leopard wreaks havoc, mauls six in Bangalore school rampage

Scary encounter: The leopard chases down a man on the school grounds.

A leopard on the loose in a school in India has mauled six people who attempted to capture the wild animal.

Somalia plane bomber was meant to be on Turkish flight - airline executive

The plane operated by Daallo Airlines sits on the runway in Mogadishu. A gaping hole in the commercial airliner forced ...

Drazen Jorgic 9:26 PM   A suspected suicide bomber who blew a hole in the fuselage of a Daallo Airlines plane last week and forced it to make an emergency landing in Mogadishu was meant to be on a Turkish Airlines flight, the Daallo chief executive said on Monday.

Kidnapped Australian arrives in Burkina Faso

Jocelyn Elliott is greeted at the airport in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

9:09 PM   Australian woman Jocelyn Elliot, who was kidnapped along with her husband Ken by al-Qaeda militants before being released on the weekend, has arrived in Burkina Faso's capital.

Turkey steps up involvement in Syria conflict

Refugees who have fled bombing in Aleppo wait at the Bab al-Salam crossing, opposite the Turkish province of Kilis, on ...

Nick Tattersall 4:45 PM   Aid trucks and ambulances entered Syria from Turkey on Sunday to help tens of thousands of people who had fled an escalating Assad government assault on Aleppo, as air strikes targeted villages on the road linking the city to the Turkish border.

Brazil's carnival revellers party on despite Zika fears

A dancer from the Unidos do Peruche samba school performs during a carnival parade in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Street processions, block parties and the televised, big budget parades of carnival moved into their second day on Sunday, even as Brazilian health officials continued to grapple with a Zika outbreak that might have infected as many as 1.5 million people.

Parisians can now buy steak from machines 24 hrs a day

The team at the Boucherie Basque "l'ami Txulette" in Paris. The butchers have now added a vending machine to the outside ...

David Chazan   Paris: Parisians seized with a sudden hunger for red meat can now buy steaks or sausages at any time of day or night from the capital's first automatic raw meat vending machine.