BRISBANE, Australia — Social media giants and search engines are under scrutiny in Australia as global hosts of extremist propaganda that can trigger real-world harm. Google, Facebook, and Twitter will front a parliament inquiry on April 30. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said a need to prevent violent and extremist material available online from causing real-world harm. “Industry needs to play its part too,” said Grant to the inquiry on April 29. Voluntary industry codes and informal relationships between officials and businesses help shape the response, and the tech giants want that to continue. Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner, Ian McCartney,…
Author: zenger.news
NEW DELHI — Before J. Jayalalithaa joined politics and became four-time chief minister of south Indian state Tamil Nadu, she was known as “Queen of Tamil cinema” and had acted in over 140 films. When the Tamil Nadu assembly was in session on March 25, 1989, some MLAs of M. Karunanidhi-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam political party assaulted her. Media coverage of her emerging from the assembly with messy hair and torn saree won a wave of sympathy from the public. That incident has made to the movie on Jayalalithaa’s life, “Thalaivi”, slated for release this year. Since Indian women joined politics, they have been marked…
KARACHI, Pakistan — “My five children often slept hungry when my husband did not get work,” Khadija Bibi, a 37-year-old from Thatta in Sindh province of Pakistan, told Zenger News. “He is a mason helper and earns PKR 7,000 ($45.35) a month when he is lucky to get work,” she said while working a small kitchen garden. “Not everyone gets lucky. Unemployment is high. The city is far. At times, he didn’t have the money to buy a bus ticket to go there in search of work.” Thatta is 102 kilometers (63 miles) from Sindh’s capital city Karachi. “A gradual increase in…
A large new international study involving 136 research institutions in 32 countries has found a disturbing trend. They discovered an increase in strokes among younger people who have COVID-19. Eighty-nine researchers, including Prof. Ronen Leker from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, analyzed data from patients who tested positive for coronavirus after they had been hospitalized for stroke and other serious brain events. The researchers analyzed whether there were differences in the MRIs of patients after contracting COVID-19 and after the onset of their stroke. They also examined whether there were geographic factors that impacted the severity of the stroke. Of…
MUMBAI, India — Every year, 28-year-old Durgesh Mandal — a domestic worker and helper in an apartment in India’s financial capital Mumbai — goes back to his village, Havi Bhouhar in the Darbhanga district of the eastern state of Bihar, for a month to spend time with his wife and three kids. Durgesh is among the scores of daily wagers who work as agricultural laborers in the rural areas during the sowing season and as house helps or on construction sites in the urban areas during the off-season. His earnings are meager at $6 for a day extending up to 18…
SYDNEY, Australia — When a veteran investigative journalist approached another television reporter with information about a mega tax fraud story that was already breaking his “eyes lit up,” a jury has heard. “Beauty,” A Current affairs reporter Brady Halls said, giving evidence in the New South Wales Supreme Court on April 28 about one encounter he had with Stephen Barrett in his newsroom in May 2017. Barrett, 63, has pleaded not guilty of acting in a joint criminal enterprise to blackmail the masterminds of an alleged AUD 105 million ($81.72 million) tax fraud scheme. Barrett at the time was freelancing…
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s tourism and hospitality sector urges the nation’s leaders to develop a plan out of the coronavirus pandemic to help the ailing industry. The Senate’s Covid-19 inquiry has held public hearings throughout the health crisis to keep tabs on the government’s response. Officials from significant tourism and hospital groups appeared at the inquiry in Australia’s capital city Canberra on April 29. Tourism Accommodation Australia chief Michael Johnson said help was needed for businesses affected by sporadic three-day lockdowns. He said such lockdowns resulted in about an AUD 100 million ($77.95 million) hit for the respective cities each time, with the most recent one…
TOWNSVILLE, Australia — Clive Palmer’s plan to develop a coal mine 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the Great Barrier Reef marine park is too risky to proceed, Australia’s Queensland environment department has found. Environmental campaigners are celebrating after the department found the former federal MP’s Central Queensland Coal (CQC) posed unacceptable risks, including to water quality in the marine park. But the mine’s future is far from sealed. The final decision rests with federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley, who has 30 business days to make a decision or seek more information. Palmer’s proposed mine site is on a coastal flood plain, about 130km northwest…
SYDNEY — Insights from the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization will open two days of hearings on April 29 at a parliamentary inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism. Counter-terrorism legislation, policy settings, and response options are all under review by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Australian Security Intelligence Organization director-general Mike Burgess, the former head of the offshore-focused Australian Signals Directorate, now has all surveillance tools at his disposal on home soil. For the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the national terrorism threat level remains probable as it has credible intelligence that individuals and groups have the…
DUBBO, Australia — Farmers are begging for help to end a biblical mouse plague that has for months troubled western areas of the South-eastern Australian state of New South Wales, where the communities are still trying to recover from drought. Mice have been running rampant through large tracts of New South Wales and parts of the North-eastern state of Queensland, destroying crops and causing significant damage to tonnes of stored hay and grain. Torrential rain that fell across much of New South Wales in March was hoped to put a significant dampener on their numbers ahead of the winter crop sowing.…