Prime Minister John Key is rejecting claims the Government is too soft on Israel and should expel the Israeli Ambassador.

One hundred gun shots echoed over Wellington today, marking the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI.

10: Harriet Sutton had five sons go to war. Francis and Benjamin never came home. Buried in foreign fields, the grieving mother worried their short lives would be forgotten.

The neglected burial site of Sapper Robert Hislop, mourned a century ago as NZ's first casualty of World War I, is expected to become an official war grave.

The entrance is a deep vertical shaft, usually hidden in a house. It drops down a dozen metres or so before reaching a horizontal passage.

One hundred years ago on Tuesday, a tense crowd of 12,000 gathered at Parliament to hear confirmation of what they already knew - the young nation of New Zealand was going to war.

9: They were the first New Zealanders on the Western Front, arriving in France in the cold spring of 1916.

Wearing a bright hijab, black blazer and long denim skirt, Mariam Abultewi sat in a taxi she had just ordered using Wasselni, a taxi-ordering and carpooling app she launched in Gaza four months ago.

Even while "the monstrous anger of the guns" was hauling millions to their death, the blame game was already well under way.

6: James Thomson Steven was a tall farmer from Totara Valley at Pleasant Pt in South Canterbury when war broke out.

Israel is approaching a fateful decision on what to do when it completes the stated initial goal of its ground offensive: locating and destroying Hamas cross-border tunnels.

A young soldier killed in a firefight with Hamas gunmen in the southern Gaza Strip was born in New Zealand.

In the dangerous streets around the hospital in Beit Hanoun, the buildings were, by and large, still standing at the start of the weekend. Then, they were gone.

Isis has used military equipment seized from Iraq in its biggest challenge yet to Assad regime forces.

1.One hundred years ago, a day after Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, its loyal dominion New Zealand announced it too was involved in the conflict.

The United States says it has evidence that Russia is planning to deliver "heavier and more powerful" rocket launchers to pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

At least 15 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli tanks shelled a UN-run school in Gaza.

In the agonising quest to pin down exactly what happened when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down over Ukraine last week, Web archivists and other digital sleuths are playing an unusual — potentially pivotal — role.

Ukraine’s security services has released photographs and videos it says show Russian-made BUK-M1 surface-to-air missile systems inside the rebel-held area.

On Sunday I stumbled on War News, the local attempt to retell the World War I story through the eyes of a radio journalist broadcasting live from the front.

Fast Facts is a series of digital resources for students and teachers. This episode focuses on New Zealand's involvement in the First World War. Courtesy Auckland Museum

Fast Facts is a series of digital resources for students and teachers. This episode takes a look at what life was like in the trenches for soldiers of the First World War. Courtesy Auckland Museum

The largest flight of Christians in the Middle East since the massacre of Armenians in Turkey during World War I continues as Isis stick to its hardline policies.