AUSTRALIA
Egg shortage hits chain
McDonald’s fast-food outlets have cut breakfast service hours as bird flu outbreaks in the country hit egg supplies. “We are carefully managing supply of eggs due to the current industry challenges,” McDonald’s Australia said in a message to customers this week. As a result, breakfast orders would stop at 10:30am instead of midday, it said. “We are working hard with our suppliers to return this back to normal as soon as possible,” it said. Authorities said H7 avian influenza has emerged at about a dozen poultry farms across Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The government said chickens at the infected farms have been “depopulated” — a euphemism for extermination.
RUSSIA
Full-face veil banned
Islamic authorities in the mostly-Muslim North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Wednesday temporarily banned women from wearing the niqab full-face veil, after simultaneous attacks targeting churches and synagogues killed 22 last month. In a statement posted on the Telegram messenger app, the Dagestan Muftiate said it was introducing a “temporary” ban on the niqab after an appeal from the Ministry of Nationality Policy and Religious Affairs. Reports following the attacks on June 23 said one of the gunmen had planned to escape wearing a niqab. The muftiate, a religious organization representing Dagestani Muslims, said that the ban would remain in place “until the identified threats are eliminated and a new theological conclusion is reached.”
AUSTRALIA
Child’s remains found
Police yesterday found the remains of a 12-year-old girl, two days after she was snatched by a crocodile while swimming in a remote creek in the north. The remains were found in the river system near where the girl vanished at the indigenous community of Palumpa in the Northern Territory, police Senior Sergeant Erica Gibson said. Injuries confirmed a crocodile attack, Gibson said. “The recovery has been made. It was particularly gruesome and a sad, devastating outcome,” Gibson told reporters. Efforts were continuing to trap the killer crocodile, she said. Saltwater crocodiles are territorial and the killer is likely to remain in nearby waterways. The crocodile population has exploded across the country’s tropical north since they became a protected species under Australian law in 1970s. Because saltwater crocodiles can live up to 70 years and grow throughout their lives — reaching up to 7m in length — the proportion of large crocodiles is also rising.
JAPAN
Floppy-disk war ends
The government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernize the bureaucracy. By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling. “We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!” Minister for Digital Transformation Taro Kono, who has been vocal about wiping out fax machines and other analogue technology in government, told Reuters in a statement on Wednesday. The Digital Agency was set up during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when a scramble to roll out nationwide testing and vaccination revealed that the government still relied on paper filing and outdated technology.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
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