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.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
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