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WorldCanadians can still feel safe riding roller-coasters after Tuesday's death at a Six Flags amusement park in the U. S., experts tell CBC News, because such accidents are "stunningly rare. "Canadian parks close rides as a precaution after man ejected from coaster in GeorgiaKevin Maimann · CBC News · Posted: Oct 14, 2026 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: October 14Listen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. Attractions are seen at Six Flags Over Georgia on Tuesday, when police say a man died after being thrown from his seat on one of the park's roller-coasters. (Mike Stewart/The Associated Press)Canadians can still feel safe riding roller-coasters after Tuesday's death at a Six Flags amusement park in the U. S., experts tell CBC News, because such accidents are "stunningly rare. " Police say a 42-year-old man killed while riding the Goliath roller-coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, in Mableton, Ga., was thrown from his seat and struck other patrons before landing below the ride. Several others were injured.

Certain places in cities often become part of one's life, often unexpectedly. For me, there's one such place here in Dublin: the Herbert Park Hotel in Ballsbridge, very close to the US Embassy. For many years, I was a frequent visitor: for business meetings, New Year's Eve celebrations, and especially for my mother's birthdays. Every year, until her 93rd birthday, her closest friends gathered there. There was always champagne on the table, usually more than one bottle. Over time, I came to associate this hotel with friendship, celebrations—and with my mother.

Congratulations to all the countries and communities on the inscription of new UNESCO World Heritage sites. These sites are part of the shared heritage of humanity and embody the spirit of cooperation and consensus at the heart of the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Inscribing a site marks the start of a lasting commitment: to protect it, manage it effectively, and ensure that it benefits its communities. As a force for cohesion and sustainable development, I am convinced that the World Heritage List must reflect the full diversity of our world – this is why the World Heritage Committee has adopted its landmark World Heritage Strategy for Small Island Developing States 2026–2034 and why, after Busan, UNESCO will further strengthen its support to the 23 State Parties still without an inscribed site. Khaled El-EnanyUNESCO Director-GeneralWith these new inscriptions, the UNESCO World Heritage List now comprises 1,273 sites across 173 countries. These newly inscribed properties now benefit from the highest level of international recognition and protection. The full list of inscribed sites is available here.

Press releaseOn World Environment Day, UNESCO designates 14 new biosphere reserves across 14 countries, bringing the World Network of Biosphere Reserves to 797 sites in 145 countries. Three countries welcome their first biosphere reserves: Montenegro, Timor-Leste, and Aruba which sees its entire territory designated as such. Marking the Day, UNESCO is also launching today a practical guide for journalists to report on the environment, drawing on case studies, and offering safeguards journalists can use in their daily work.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued a long list of demands for the World Bank in line with Trump administration interests, including ending the bank’s prohibition on financing upstream oil and gas projects, putting resources into deep-sea critical minerals mining and reforming its procurement policies. Bessent, in a statement issued late on Wednesday to the steering committees of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, also said that the IMF should do more to push back on countries’ non-market policies that lead to global imbalances, a veiled reference to US criticism of China.

World of WarcraftHere you'll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to World of Warcraft: Midnight, Mists of Pandaria Classic, Season of Discovery, Burning Crusade Classic, WoW Classic Era, and Hardcore. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require scheduled realm restarts to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied. Fixed an issue where faction-specific mounts were hidden from the Mount Journal on characters of the opposite faction.

Since opening in September 1987, the Olympic Oval at the University of Calgary has been a training ground for thousands of speedskaters, including 40 Olympic medallists — 12 gold. Oval staff colloquially call it Canada’s medal factory, despite its trademarked name, The Fastest Ice in the World™. Canada won 21 medals at the Milano Cortina Olympics this past February, 24 per cent by long-track speedskaters who train at the Oval. “We have more than just Canadian athletes training here. We have international skaters who train here, too,” says Jonathan Guilmette, manager of high-performance sport at the Oval and himself an Olympian with one gold and two silvers. “Some become Olympic medallists and continue to train here after reaching the Olympic podium, and others may not reach the Olympic podium, but find success at other levels of competition. That is important, too. Success is not only about Olympic medals.” A Belgian speedskater adjusts his helmet at the Oval, one of the world's premier high-performance speedskating facilities.

On the occasion of the FIP General Assembly, held in Madrid, Spain, on 12 October 2026, the President of the International Padel Federation, Luigi Carraro, officially presented the third edition of the World Padel Report. Produced by the FIP Data Analysis & IT Department, the 2026 edition provides a comprehensive overview of the global development of padel, bringing together key data and insights on the sport, its players, competitions, infrastructure, and international growth. The report also includes the World Padel Impact, an economic study developed to assess the contribution and impact of the padel industry worldwide.

A World Bank-led initiative has attracted attention for its promising plans to improve water access to 1 billion people by the year 2030. At the UN, members of the African Union called for a world map that better represents continents’ proportions. This is what the proposed new world map might look like, showing the sizes of regions near the equator more realistically.

NVIDIA joins The Earthshot Prize as a Global Alliance Founding Partner, providing Earthshot Finalists around the world with technical training, engineering support and access to AI computing resources. This collaboration gives Finalists new capabilities to predict climate risk earlier, monitor nature, accelerate discoveries and optimise complex systems at scale.

Over the weekend, NASA's Perseverance rover set a new off-world milestone, as it broke all previous records for farthest distance ever travelled on another planetary body in our solar system. Since 1970, humans have sent nine different robotic rovers to trundle around on other celestial bodies — four to the Moon and five to Mars. The three smallest, including NASA's Sojourner Mars rover and China's Yutu and Yutu 2 lunar rovers, barely drove a distance of 100 metres in total, each, before their missions ended. Meanwhile, Lunokhod 1 and 2, sent by the Soviets to the Moon in the early 1970s, made it significantly farther. Lunokhod 1 drove over 10 kilometres, and Lunokhod 2 set a record in 1973 that held for decades, with a total distance of 39 kilometres. This infographic illustrates the distances driven by various rovers on the surface of the Moon and Mars — 3 human-driven and 9 robotic. Each distance is the final mission distance, or in the cases of Perseverance and Curiosity, their distances driven as of Oct. 11, 2026. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)NASA's Opportunity rover finally broke that record, in 2014, after 10 years on the Martian surface.

Chinese referee Ma Ning has become the unlikely face of the 2026 World Cup in China, with memes about the 46-year-old going viral and multiple domestic brands announcing collaborations with him. Over the past week, Ma has been announced as brand ambassador for several major Chinese companies, including tech giant Lenovo, consumer electronics maker Hisense, and dairy brand Mengniu. Official accounts dedicated to Ma have also been launched on lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, and video streaming site Bilibili. Ma is the only Chinese match referee at this year’s FIFA World Cup, which will run from June 12 to July 20. It marks his second appearance at a World Cup, following his debut at the 2022 tournament in Qatar, where he served as a fourth official — an assistant referee who works off-pitch. With China’s national football team failing to qualify for this year’s World Cup, Ma has emerged as someone Chinese fans can still support. Ma is joined at the tournament by assistant referee Zhou Fei and VAR official Fu Ming.

Scottie Scheffler continues to be the dominant world No 1 in men's golf, but how long will he stay top of the rankings and will he put more of Tiger Woods' records under threat? Scheffler remains the most recent addition to the list of 25 players to have topped the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) since its introduction in 1986, with the American having four different spells at No 1 so far in his career. The latest spell remains unbroken since May 2023, with Scheffler - as of October 12 - entering his 178th consecutive week as world No 1 and with a larger advantage over world No 2 Rory McIlroy than the Northern Irishman has over almost every active professional.

3 days agoAlison Francis, Rebecca MorelleandKevin Church, BBC News ScienceThe world's oldest shipwreck has been discovered off the coast of Turkey, archaeologists say. They have dated it to between 4,400 and 4,700 years old, which is the Early Bronze Age, and is around the same time that the Great Pyramid was being built. The ship's wooden structure has not survived, but the ceramic storage pots it was carrying were lying on the sea floor and, remarkably, some still contain traces of what they held inside. The archaeologists who found the ship say it was about 10m in length and was a trade vessel carrying cargo across the Mediterranean Sea. "The shipwreck is a time capsule at the bottom of the sea," said Prof Hakan Öniz, from Akdeniz University in Turkey, who led the Mediterranean Archaeology Association expedition. Hakan ÖnizThe divers found three stone anchors, as ships carried spares on long voyages The wreck is close to the shore of Kekova Island in Antalya, Turkey. The artefacts lie scattered across an underwater slope, just 30m beneath the waves. Three large stone anchors were found, as well as more than 30 ceramic storage pots, called amphorae.