AUSTRALIA
Children challenge law
A constitutional challenge against a social media ban on children younger than 16 has been filed in the High Court, two weeks before the law is set to take effect. A campaign group called the Digital Freedom Project yesterday said that it launched proceedings in a bid to block the law, with two 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, as plaintiffs in the case. More than 1 million accounts held by teenagers under 16 are set to be deactivated in the nation when the ban on platforms including YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat, as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, starts on Dec. 10. The Digital Freedom Project said the ban “robs” young people of their freedom of political communication.
Photo: AP
INDONESIA
Floods, slides kill eight
Floods and landslides killed at least eight people and injured dozens after torrential rains struck Sumatra, a disaster official said yesterday. Extreme weather has lashed North Sumatra for several days, flooding parts of the Tapanuli Selatan district since Monday, the national disaster agency said. “In Tapanuli Selatan, the disaster of floods and landslides has resulted in eight people losing their lives, 58 being injured and 2,851 residents had to evacuate,” agency spokesman Abdul Muhari said in a statement.
ETHIOPIA
Volcanic activity subsides
Volcanic activity at Hayli Gubbi volcano subsided on Tuesday, days after an eruption that left a trail of destruction in nearby villages and caused flight cancelations after ash plumes disrupted flight paths. Villages in the district of Afdera in the Afar region were covered in ash, officials said residents were coughing, and livestock found their grass and water covered. Airlines canceled dozens of flights scheduled to fly over affected areas as the meteorological department said the ash clouds were expected to clear later in the day. Atalay Ayele, a geologist at Addis Ababa University, said that it was “the first recorded eruption of Hayli Gubbi in the last 10,000 years.”
ISRAEL
Hostage remains identified
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday said that the latest remains returned from Gaza had been identified as hostage Dror Or. That left the bodies of two hostages in Gaza as the first phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement nears a conclusion. Palestinian militants released Or’s remains on Tuesday. Dror Or was killed by militants who overran his home in Kibbutz Beeri on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military said. His wife, Yonat Or, was also killed in the attack.
? BOLIVIA
Government outlines cuts
The new government on Tuesday said that it is targeting 30 percent reductions in spending and tax cuts to stabilize the economy when it proposes its budget in February. President Rodrigo Paz took office earlier this month, ending nearly 20 years of socialist government under former presidents Evo Morales and Luis Arce. “We will reduce fiscal spending by at least 30 percent by 2026. This involves an exhaustive process of reviewing public spending and reorganizing state institutions,” Minister of Economic Affairs Jose Gabriel Espinoza told a news conference alongside Paz. The new government’s proposal to Congress would be a “massive reduction” representing 4 percentage points of the country’s GDP, Espinoza said. The nation is in the grips of an economic crisis, with year-on-year inflation at 23 percent and a chronic shortage of fuel.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail
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