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.
‘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]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
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