CHILE
Haitians apply for visa
Haitians living in the country on Monday began a process that would facilitate the reunification of family members, thanks to a new humanitarian visa. Haitians can apply for the 12-month visa if they already have family living in the Andean nation. The measure was announced in April as the country looked to grapple with an influx of migrants, mostly from crisis-hit Venezuela and Haiti. It is to issue 10,000 such humanitarian visas a year. The country has actually tightened the rules for Haitians, canceling a previous tourist visa-on-arrival and imposing a new system that requires them to apply for a 30-day visa in their capital, Port-au-Prince.
AUSTRALIA
Senator causes uproar
A senator has been accused of “slut-shaming” a fellow parliamentarian after telling her to “stop shagging men” in a grubby dispute that yesterday saw the prime minister demand an apology. Senator David Leyonhjelm last week made the derogatory remarks about fellow Senator Sarah Hanson-Young during a heated debate in parliament’s upper house about legalizing pepper spray to protect women. He reportedly told her to “fuck off” when she confronted him over the incident. Leyonhjelm, who does not dispute what happened, repeated his comments and aired other rumors about Hanson-Young in a weekend television interview while refusing to apologize.
INTERNET
Bug unblocks contacts
Facebook on Monday said it is notifying more than 800,000 users that a software bug temporarily unblocked people at the social network and its Messenger service. The glitch active between May 29 and June 5 has been fixed, said Facebook, which has been striving to regain trust in the aftermath of a Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. “We know that the ability to block someone is important,” Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said in a blog post. “We’d like to apologize and explain what happened.”
UNITED STATES
Attorney general accused
Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has been investigated after four women claimed that he touched them inappropriately at a bar earlier this year. The Indianapolis Star obtained an eight-page memo written by the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, which conducted its investigation at the request of legislative leaders. The memo states that a lawmaker and three legislative staffers said Hill inappropriately touched them during a party on the final night of Indiana’s legislative session. Hill, a Republican, denied the allegations.
UNITED STATES
Hunter sparks outrage
Images of a Kentucky hunter posing with the body of a black giraffe she killed in South Africa have triggered an online backlash after going viral on social media. Thousands of Twitter users expressed outrage at Tess Thompson Talley, 37, for killing the giraffe on a hunting trip last summer. “Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today! Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite awhile,” Talley wrote in a since-deleted post on Facebook, according to USA Today. The post said the animal was more than 18 years old, weighed 1,814kg and yielded 907kg of meat. The pictures went viral only recently after being reposted on Twitter last month by the Web site Africalandpost.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion