NEW ZEALAND
Cyclist legislator gives birth
Lawmaker Julie Anne Genter got on her bicycle early on Sunday and headed to the hospital — where she gave birth an hour later. “Big news! At 3.04am this morning we welcomed the newest member of our family. I genuinely wasn’t planning to cycle in labour, but it did end up happening,” the Greens politician wrote on Facebook a few hours later. The island nation has a reputation for down-to-earth politicians. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern famously brought her then-three-month-old to a UN meeting as she was still breastfeeding. Genter — who is her party’s spokesperson for transport issues — also biked to the hospital in 2018 to give birth to her first-born, local media said.
AUSTRALIA
Online bullying law mulled
The government would introduce legislation to make social media giants provide details of users who post defamatory comments, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday. The government has been looking at the extent of the responsibility of platforms for defamatory material published on their sites, he said. The announcement comes after the country’s highest court ruled that publishers can be held liable for comments on online forums, which led to some news outlets, such as CNN, to deny Australians access to their Facebook pages. “The online world should not be a Wild West where bots and bigots and trolls and others are anonymously going around and can harm people,” Morrison said. The new legislation would introduce a complaints mechanism, so that if somebody thinks they are being defamed on social media, they would be able to require the platform to take the material down. If the content is not withdrawn, a court process could force the platform to provide details of the commenter.
CHINA
N Korean escapee captured
Police have captured a North Korean prisoner who last month staged a daring escape from jail and had been on the run for more than forty days, authorities said yesterday. Officials were offering a US$23,000 bounty for the recapture of the escapee, sparking massive interest on social media. The 39-year-old prisoner escaped the facility in Jilin City by scaling a shed and vaulting the outer wall on Oct. 18. A one-line statement from Jilin police said he had been remanded at about 10am yesterday morning, without giving more details. Videos shared by state-run Beijing News showed an emaciated-looking man being carried by several officers and a photograph of him with his hands behind his back. The man was convicted of illegal entry into China, larceny and robbery, and was due for release and deportation back to North Korea in 2023, prompting online speculation that he broke out to avoid being sent back.
CHINA
WTA reiterates concerns
Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) chairman Steve Simon has said he remains “deeply concerned” about the whereabouts of tennis player Peng Shuai (彭帥) and her ability to “communicate freely, openly and directly” after allegations that a powerful politician forced her to have sex. The three-time Olympian and former doubles champion has dropped out of public view after accusing former vice premier Zhang Gaoli (張高麗) of sexual abuse in a Nov. 2 social media post that was quickly taken down. “Steve Simon has reached out to Peng Shuai via various communication channels,” the WTA said in a statement on Saturday. “He has sent her two e-mails, to which it was clear her responses were influenced by others.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate