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.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
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