The civil war in Syria has forced a record three million people out of the country as more than a million people fled in the past year, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.

A British extremist who is one of the suspects in the murder of James Foley is the son of an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist awaiting trial.

Twenty years before our air force split from the Defence Force in 1937, air fever swept the country.

For generations that have not known war, our stories from exactly a century ago are an insight into what it would be like.

An Israeli air strike hit a house in central Gaza before dawn yesterday, fatally injuring five family members, including two women and two preschoolers.

Israel said it would call up 10,000 reservists as Palestinians vowed to avenge Israel's killing of three Hamas commanders in Gaza.

A leading war historian believes millions being spent on World War I commemorations will be wasted if it fails to focus on education rather than remembrance.

Obama undeterred as air strikes continue even though jihadists say they will execute more US journalists

David Cameron has said that it is "increasingly likely" that a British jihadist beheaded American journalist James Foley

The headstone, its inscription concealed for decades under a coat of lichen, bears witness to the past.

A young soldier who died exactly 100 years ago has been officially acknowledged as the first New Zealand casualty of WWI.

Up to 80 Yazidis have been reported killed by Isis (Islamic State) fighters in the biggest massacre so far of the Iraqi minority.

Australia is considering joining the United States in a limited military operation to rescue as many as 30,000 Iraqi refugees trapped on a barren mountain in the north.

18: In 1871, a German giant mobilised the New Zealand left. That year 600 people, inspired by Karl Marx, formed an unemployed workers union and demonstrated.

The son of a WWII prisoner of war and hero of the Battle of Crete who admitted stealing nearly $90,000 from his dead father's veterans' pension will only have to repay $4500.

America is to supply weapons directly to Kurdish fighters in Iraq for the first time, to help the lightly armed forces in the north push back jihadist rebels, assisted by US air power.

The people of the mountain can see their villages, and the headlights of the jihadi patrols snaking through the streets they have abandoned, and know they cannot return.

US air strikes are boosting Kurdish morale as they hit Isis fighters, and a road is now open for thousands of Yazidis cut off in the mountains.

William Burnwas the first New Zealand pilot killed in World War I action.

Among Pam MacDonald's most prized treasures is the black-and-white photograph of her late father cradling her in his arms when she was a baby.

National's election war-chest has been given a half-million dollar boost by the estate of a wealthy Christchurch businessman.

An Australian jihadist has tweeted a photo of his young son holding up a severed head of a dead Syrian soldier.

Prince Harry has recalled the "horrendous" images he saw during two tours of Afghanistan.

Up to 150,000 desperate refugees were still isolated on a barren stretch of mountain in Iraq, surrounded by Islamic extremists despite a major international intervention.

The first All Black to die in World War I was Albert "Doolan" Downing, a rangy forward who sported a Ranfurly Shield tattoo on his left arm.

The 8-year-old boy's question seemed simple enough but was all the more tragically poignant for that.

The spoils of a battle that gave hope to the Allies in their darkest hour will go on sale at a special auction next week.