The world comes to Lanaken for the FEI WBFSH Jumping World Breeding Championship for Young Horses 2026 - World of Showjumping

The population of New Zealand’s endemic wētāpunga – believed to be the world’s heaviest insect – is officially “increasing” thanks to a groundbreaking breeding programme that has overseen the release of 11,000 insects into the wild. “The future of wētāpunga is looking bright,” said Dr Chris Green, an honorary researcher at the department of conservation, who documented the success of the project for the New Zealand Journal of Zoology. Green co-authored a report released on 2 October that outlines the success of the breeding programme. “Eleven thousand individuals for release is extraordinary and outstanding.”A female wētāpunga can weigh as much as a mouse. Its body can grow up to 10cm long (nearly 4in) and its leg span can be as wide as 20cm. It is the largest of 70 wētā species and was once found across parts of the North Island before predation from introduced species and habitat loss contributed to their decline. By the 1990s, they were considered “endangered” and are now presumed extinct in the wild on New Zealand’s mainland. The insects reside primarily on a smattering of predator-free islands in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf and off the coast of Northland.

2026 FEI Driving World Championship for Single Horses Set to Begin in Munich, Germany |

Israeli settlers have attacked European diplomats, including a French mayor, near the Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank. The delegation was visiting Palestinian olive harvesters on Saturday when the Israeli attackers confronted the group. The attack comes a day after settlers assaulted a US journalist north of Ramallah. In Saturday’s incident, the settlers targeted Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said. “A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle damaged,” Prevot said, linking the attack to what he called Israel’s “illegal settlement policy” and pledging to push for further European Union sanctions. French mayor Bernard Baudoux, who was assaulted, told the AFP news agency that the violence suggests that “there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government” towards settler violence. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said the settlers surrounded the diplomats’ vehicles, pelted them with stones and smashed their windows.

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What researchers uncovered through lab testing and surveillance footage, prosecutors said, was a plot by his fellow graduate student to intentionally poison him.