Australian PM Scott Morrison announced that a ban on Australians travelling abroad will be lifted next month, a move that will ease one of the world’s harshest border closures spanning over 18 months. The government also said that it has put India’s Covishield on its list of “approved vaccines” for incoming travellers. Residents, international students, economic and humanitarian visa holders who have been administered Covishield - a version of AstraZeneca manufactured in India - or China’s CoronaVac will be considered “appropriately vaccinated” for entry, said the government. Notably, Indian students make up for the second largest cohort of international students in Australia behind China. In 2018-2019, Indians contributed $5.5 billion dollars to the $33 billion dollar education industry while China contributed $12.1 billion. Travellers vaccinated with Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin or Sputnik, however, will not be considered “appropriately vaccinated”.
UK pensioners to get £10 in extra cash
Recipients of pension in UK are eligible to get £10 in extra cash from the government as Christmas bonus. The bonus is a tax-free payment and the amount is automatically deposited into your account, meaning that there is no time-consuming application process required to receive the cash.
The payment will be deposited into an account such as a bank account, in the same way that other benefits, pensions and allowances are normally paid. The transaction may show up as ‘DWP XB’ on one’s bank statement, so people who believe they may be entitled to receive the Christmas bonus should pay attention to their bank statement to see if they have received the £10 payment. People who use online banking should also be able to see from their transaction history whether or not they have received the Christmas bonus.
TTP kills Pak army captain
In yet another attack on the Pakistani security forces, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) killed an army captain during an operation in the northwestern Tank district next to the country’s restive tribal district of South Waziristan bordering Afghanistan, the Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s media arm, said. In a statement, the ISPR said that forces conducted an operation after receiving information about the presence of terrorists in Tank. Separately, the Pakistani security forces claimed they had killed 10 suspected terrorists, including four commanders, in the remote Sarwakai area of South Waziristan. A statement from the ISPR said the terrorists were killed in an intense exchange of fire. The TTP, however,, contradicted the military’s claim, saying that Pakistani security forces had carried out a drone strike that killed a woman and 2 children.
A third gender category in Nepal census
Nepal has introduced a third gender category in its census for the first time, a move the Himalayan nation’s LGBTQ community hopes will bring them greater rights. Officials from the Central Bureau of Statistics have been visiting homes across the country of 30 million people, giving respondents the option of choosing “others” as their gender, alongside male and female. Nepal already has some of South Asia’s most progressive laws on homosexuality and transgender rights, with landmark reforms passed in 2007 prohibiting gender or sexual orientation discrimination. A third gender category for citizenship documents was introduced in 2013 and Nepal began issuing passports with the “others” category two years later. But gay and transgender Nepalis and rights activists say the LGTBQ community still faces discrimination, particularly for jobs, health and education. They say a lack of data has hampered access to benefits they are entitled to.
Arab world’s first woman PM
Tunisian President Kais Saied appointed Najla Bouden Romdhane as the first female prime minister in his country to form a new government. Since 2011, she has served as director general in charge of quality at the Higher Education Ministry. She also held the position of head of the Purpose Action Unit in the ministry. Addressing the newly head of government, Saied announced that “given the exceptional situation the country is going through, I decided to entrust you with forming a new government,” Xinhua news agency reported. “You are the first female head of government in the history of our nation,” Saied added. “We will work together with a strong will and determination to eradicate corruption and put an end to the chaos,” said Saied. “I hope you will manage to propose the composition of the government in the coming hours or days, in accordance with the provisions of the last exceptional measures,” the president added.
China unveils plan to tighten censorship
China unveiled a three-year plan to bring the algorithms related to internet information services of its fast-growing web industry under state control. Chinese regulators will strengthen the management of algorithms related to internet information services to foster “healthy” and “orderly” development of the industry, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. A three-year campaign will seek to put in place a sound management mechanism and supervision system, and a standardised algorithm ecosystem, according to new guidelines issued by nine ministries or departments including the cyberspace administration of China. The guidelines urged enterprises to strengthen their sense of responsibility and set up responsibility systems for algorithm security and sci-tech ethical review systems. Legal violations and malpractices related to algorithms will be severely punished, the report said.
Lennon recording sells for $58,300
A cassette tape with a 33-minute audio recording of John Lennon being interviewed by four Danish teenagers 51 years ago as well as an apparently unpublished song by the late Beatle fetched 370,000 kroner ($58,240) at an auction in Denmark. The tape, recorded on January 5, 1970, chiefly consists of Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, speaking about being in Denmark and world peace. It also has the couple singing two songs: 1969’s “Give Peace a Chance” and “Radio Peace”, which was made for a radio station in the Netherlands but never released. The cassette was put up for sale by Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneer in Copenhagen, together with 29 still photos and a copy of the school newspaper for which the teenagers had interviewed Lennon and Ono. The pre-sale estimate was $31,481 to $47,222. It was not immediately known who bought the recording.
Prison emergency in Ecuador
Ecuador’s president has declared a state of emergency in the prison system following a battle among gang members in a coastal lockup that killed at least 116 people and injured 80 in what authorities say was the worst prison bloodbath ever in the country. Officials said at least five of the dead were found to have been beheaded. President Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency, which will give the government powers that include deploying police and soldiers inside prisons. The order came a day after bloodshed at the Litoral penitentiary in Guayaquil that officials blamed on gangs linked to international drug cartels fighting for control of the facility. Images circulating on social media showed scenes that looked like battlefields. The fighting was with firearms, knives and bombs, officials said. Earlier, police had said that bodies were being found in the prison’s pipelines.
Russia threatens Navalny and allies
Russia sharply escalated a campaign against jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, opening a new criminal case against President Putin’s fiercest domestic critic that could allow the authorities to hand him another decade in jail. In a case condemned by the West, Navalny, 45, is already serving two-and-a-half years in prison for parole violations he says were trumped up to thwart his political ambitions. The new case, details of which were published on the website of Russia’s Investigative Committee, named Navalny as being suspected of founding and leading an extremist group. Such a crime carries a punishment of up to a decade in jail. The statement said some of Navalny’s key allies were suspects in the same case.
World’s youngest astronomer
When Nicole Oliveira was just learning to walk, she would throw up her arms to reach for the stars in the sky. Today, at just eight years of age, the Brazilian girl is known as the world’s youngest astronomer, looking for asteroids as part of a Nasa-affiliated programme, attending international seminars and meeting with her country’s top space and science figures. The project, called Asteroid Hunters, is meant to give young people a chance to make space discoveries of their own. It is run by the International Astronomical Search Collaboration, a citizen science programme affiliated with Nasa, in partnership with Brazil’s ministry of science. Beaming with pride, Nicole said she has already found 18 asteroids.“I will give them the names of Brazilian scientists, or members of my family, like my mom or my dad,” she said. If her findings are certified, which may take several years, Nicole will become the youngest person in the world to officially discover an asteroid, breaking the record of 18-year-old Italian Luigi Sannino.
Woman who fled Nazi war crimes trial found
A 96-year-old German woman was caught hours after failing to turn up for her trial on charges of aiding and abetting mass murder in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, a court spokesperson said. Irmgard Furchner is accused of having contributed as an 18-year-old to the murder of 11,412 people when she was a typist at the Stutthof concentration camp between 1943 and 1945. But her trial in the far northern town of Itzehoe could not begin in her absence. “The defendant left her home in the early hours and took a taxi to an unknown location,” the spokesperson said. Itzehoe is some 100 km from the Danish border. Furchner has been detained and that a doctor was assessing whether her health would allow her to be imprisoned. The next hearing was scheduled for October 19, the spokesperson added.
Malawi’s ex-deputy speaker shoots himself dead
A former deputy speaker in Malawi has shot himself dead inside parliament in the capital, Lilongwe, authorities said. Clement Chiwaya, who moved in a wheelchair, had gone to the building to discuss vehicle benefits entitled to him when he left office two years ago. “The incident is in relation to frustration with the implementation of his conditions of service.” Chiwaya, who was 50, bought his official vehicle at the end of his five-year term in 2019, as provided for in his contract. But he had tried to get parliament to pay for damages incurred in an accident that happened six months later. “Unfortunately, the comprehensive insurance had expired at the time of the accident,” the parliament’s statement said. A source at parliament said that Chiwaya shot himself in the head inside the office of the clerk of parliament. Before he became deputy speaker, Chiwaya served as a member of parliament from 2004.
Zimbabwe freezes 30 accounts over illegal activities
Zimbabwe's central bank has frozen the bank accounts of 30 people accused of illegally exchanging foreign currency through mobile phones and social networks. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said it had identified 30 people "abusing mobile telecommunication services and other social media platforms" for "illegal foreign exchange transactions and money laundering". Their accounts have been frozen and they are now banned from banking for two years. They also face being blocked by telephone operators. The Zimbabwean government has been trying to promote the local currency since it was temporarily abandoned in 2009 in favor of the US dollar due to hyperinflation. Faced with a lack of liquidity, the country printed new notes in 2016. The local currency has continued to lose value and foreign currency is traded on the black market at cheap rates.
Kilos of metallic objects removed from man’s stomach
Doctors in Lithuania said they had removed over a kg of nails and screws from the stomach of a man who started swallowing metallic objects after quitting alcohol. The man, who was not identified, was admitted to hospital in the port city of Klaipeda with severe abdominal pain. An X-ray of his stomach showed up pieces of metal - some measuring up to 10 cms. “During the three-hour operation with X-ray control, all foreign bodies in the patient’s stomach were removed,” said surgeon Sarunas Dailidenas. The doctor said that the man had begun swallowing the metal objects over the last month after he had stopped drinking. The patient was in a stable condition, doctors said.
35-year serial killer mystery ends
A former policeman suspected of being the serial killer behind some of France’s oldest unsolved cases has been found dead after 35 years of dodging arrest, just as police were closing in on his identity. Francois Verove, 59, committed suicide at his rented home in the south of France after receiving a summons for questioning, leaving a "written statement" and with DNA evidence then confirming his identity, the Paris prosecutor said. The man, nicknamed “Le Grele” (“pockmarked”), had been wanted by police since the 1980s for the murder and rape of young girls. Over the years, investigators came to believe that the suspect may have been part of the gendarmerie - police-like armed forces in charge of internal security. In recent months, an investigating magistrate had begun questioning around 750 gendarmes who had been deployed in the Paris region at the time. One of them was Verove.
