Nintendo’s long-awaited Switch 2 has been released worldwide. Many stores opened at midnight with eager fans queuing to be among the first to get their hands on one. Switch 2 is the first major console launch in five years. It comes with about 25 games – one of the big newcomers is Mario Kart World....
Reuters A travel ban issued on Wednesday by US President Donald Trump is set to primarily affect countries in Africa and the Middle East. Twelve countries face full bans, which will come into force on Monday. People from a further seven nations are facing partial restrictions. Trump has depicted it as a matter of national...
Phil Mackie Midlands correspondent Reporting fromAlgarve, Portugal BBC News Searches for Madeleine McCann resumed on Thursday near to where the three-year-old disappeared from Praia da Luz, Portugal 18 years ago. German and Portuguese investigators have until Friday to look for evidence relating to her disappearance but there has been no obvious sign of any major...
An Australian woman accused of poisoning relatives with beef Wellington laced with toxic mushrooms is being cross examined in a murder trial. On Thursday, prosecutors claimed that photos on 50-year-old Erin Patterson’s phone showed her using kitchen scales to measure a lethal dose of the death caps. Ms Patterson’s in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both...
New Zealand’s parliament has voted to suspend three Māori MPs for their protest haka during a sitting last year. Opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who started the traditional dance after being asked if her party, Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party), supported a controversial bill, has received a seven-day ban. The party’s co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie...
Israeli forces have recovered the bodies of two Israeli Americans taken back to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, the Israeli military says. Judi Weinstein Haggai, 70, who was also a Canadian citizen, and her husband Gadi Haggai, 72, were murdered by gunmen from the Mujahideen Brigades...
A member of New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s staff has resigned after being accused of secretly taking photos and videos of women, and recording audio of sex workers. Michael Forbes, Luxon’s deputy chief press secretary, offered his “sincerest apologies to the women I have harmed”. The allegations came to light after a sex worker...
Anbarasan Ethirajan South Asia Regional Editor Bonhams The oil portrait of Mahatma Gandhi was painted in the UK in 1931 A rare oil portrait of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi – painted in 1931 in the UK – will be auctioned in London next month. Gandhi led a non-violent resistance movement against British rule in...
Donald Trump has suspended for an initial six months the entry of foreign students seeking to study or participate in exchange programmes at Harvard University. The US president issued the proclamation on Wednesday, citing “national security” concerns and declaring it “detrimental” to US interests to continue allowing foreign students at the institution. Harvard has responded...
Voters in Burundi are heading to the polls amid a backdrop of surging inflation, fuel shortages and complaints of political repression. Seats in the National Assembly, Senate and local councils are up for grabs but Évariste Ndayishimiye is safe in his role as president as he is serving a seven-year term that ends in 2027....
A hungry elephant from Khao Yai National Park in Thailand has caused havoc in a local corner store, helping himself to produce on the shelves. The elephant, named Plai Biang Lek, is known by locals for entering people’s homes in search of food. He ventured about one kilometre from the park entrance gate to the...
BBC Think, Denmark. Images of sleek, impossibly chic Copenhagen, the capital, might spring to mind. As well as a sense of a liberal, open society. That is the Scandinavian cliché. But when it comes to migration, Denmark has taken a dramatically different turn. The country is now “a pioneer in restrictive migration policies” in Europe,...
Arunoday Mukharji BBC News Pritam Roy/BBC Shona Banu was allegedly picked up by the police last month and sent to Bangladesh; she was sent back to India four days later Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few days. The 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India’s north-eastern state of Assam,...
The US has vetoed the UN Security Council’s draft resolution calling for an “unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in Gaza. The other 14 members voted in favour of the document, which also demanded the release of all hostages and the lifting of humanitarian aid restrictions. The US Ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, said the resolution...
Paul Adams Diplomatic correspondent Reporting fromKyiv, Ukraine SBU A screengrab of some of the drone footage released by Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday Three days on, and Ukraine is still digesting the full implications of Operation Spider’s Web, Sunday’s massive assault on Russia’s strategic aviation. On Wednesday, the agency which orchestrated the attack, the Security Service...