Tag: Region Oceania

Unusually for him, Donald Trump made no great fuss as he signed one drily worded executive order last Tuesday. Public attention was distracted that day – by the headline-grabbing drama of Elon Musk bludgeoning his way through the federal bureaucracy, by immigrants deported to Guantánamo Bay, and by the torrent of other directives Trump has issued since his inauguration last month. But Trump’s 69th executive order of his second presidency, under the deceptive title of “Ensuring accountability for all agencies”,…

(Reuters) – Australia’s competition watchdog said on Friday it had given Virgin Australia [IPO-VIR.AX] and Qatar Airways interim approval to operate flights between Doha and Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney under an integrated alliance. The two airlines can start marketing and selling 28 weekly scheduled return flights between the destinations, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement. Qatar Airways had said in October that it was set to buy a 25% stake in Virgin Australia from U.S….

Global financiers are poised to flock to Saudi Arabia’s annual flagship investment conference next week as a tightening of the kingdom’s purse strings and a deepening of regional conflict cloud the outlook. Among those expected to descend on the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh are top CEOs, including Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser and the London Stock Exchange’s Julia Hoggett. The high-profile event, first held in 2017, fills an opulent hotel in the capital…

OFSI has updated General Licence INT/2022/1280876 which permits certain UK, EU and Guernsey subsidiaries of VTB and Sberbank (Russian banks) to make payment for basic needs, reasonable fees or service charges arising from routine holding and maintenance of its frozen funds and the payment of legal fees and insolvency-related services. § 5.2 of the GL has been amended to change the Insolvency Proceedings that apply to EU subsidiary, OWH SE. All UK GLs are on the UK Licensing.

Wikileaks founder, publisher, journalist and DiEM25 founding member, Julian Assange, will reportedly enter into a plea deal with the United States prosecutors and be sentenced with time served.

On a tiny island off Panama’s Caribbean coast, about 300 families are packing their belongings in preparation for a dramatic change. Generations of Gunas who have grown up on Gardi Sugdub in a life dedicated to the sea and tourism will trade that next week for the mainland’s solid ground. They go voluntarily — sort of. The Gunas of Gardi Sugdub are the first of 63 communities along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts that government officials and scientists expect to…

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Tech billionaire Elon Musk accused Australia of censorship after an Australian judge ruled that his social media platform X must block users worldwide from accessing video of a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded Tuesday by describing Musk as an “arrogant billionaire” who considered himself above the law and was out of touch with the public. X Corp., the tech company rebranded in 2023 by Musk after he bought Twitter,…

CAIRO (AP) — Two basic mistakes, according to the Israeli military. First, an officer overlooked a message detailing the vehicles in the convoy. Second, a spotter saw something in one car – possibly a bag – that he thought was a weapon. Officials say the result was the series of Israeli drone strikes that killed seven aid workers on a dark Gaza road. The Israeli military has described the deadly strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy as a tragic…

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The bodies of six foreign aid workers killed in a series of Israeli strikes were transported out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt on Wednesday ahead of their repatriation, Egypt’s state-run Qahera TV reported. The deadly strikes have renewed criticism of Israel’s conduct in the nearly six-monthlong war with Hamas, and highlighted the perilous conditions aid workers face in trying to deliver food to the besieged enclave, where experts say nearly a third of…

LONDON (AP) — Farmers drove dozens of tractors in a slow-motion convoy towards Britain’s Parliament on Monday to protest post- Brexit rules and trade deals that they say are endangering livelihoods and food security. Supporters of the campaign groups Save British Farming and Fairness for Farmers of Kent drove from southeast England and through southern districts of the capital, bound for Parliament Square, where dozens of supporters waited to welcome them. Britain has so far not seen large-scale farmers’ protests…

washington —  Civil liberties declined globally for the 18th consecutive year in 2023, with conflict and flawed elections the biggest factors, a new report has found. Political rights and civil liberties deteriorated for more than one-fifth of the population, the non-profit group Freedom House found. And only one-fifth of the 210 countries and territories the research group analyzed was found to be “free.” Released on Thursday, the Freedom in the World report assesses political rights and civil liberties, then ranks…

At the height of the online file-sharing boom, the phrase ‘Sharing is Caring’ was a reminder that peer-to-peer file-sharing systems lived or died on the availability of upload bandwidth. Its presentation allowed it to be about much more than that. The ‘give to get’ philosophy forms part of the BitTorrent protocol even today, but Sharing is Caring was a phrase that could influence human behavior, to the benefit of the wider file-sharing movement, with no suggestion of pressure. Sharing is…

There has been an unexpected validation of the title of Our Enemy, the Government (Brownstone, 2023). In a stunning indictment of the state of governance in the Australian state of Victoria, an unidentified senior bureaucrat classified citizens according to their compliance with the government’s Covid diktats. This is the state whose capital Melbourne suffered through the world’s longest lockdown (267 days!). Yet, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Victoria had the worst overall Covid mortality outcome between March 2020…

US-based genomics scientist Kevin McKernan says he has lost an estimated US $200,000 worth of research data after his account on file hosting service MEGA was deleted overnight. It appears that McKernan’s account was deleted by MEGA in response to an urgent injunction granted to New Zealand’s (NZ) Ministry of Health (MOH) to prevent the sharing of anonymised data leaked by whistleblower Barry Young. Young, a 56-year-old database administrator and former employee of the MOH, leaked data from a ‘pay…

Japanese car maker Nissan is investigating a cyberattack that targeted its systems in Australia and New Zealand, which may have let hackers access personal information. Details of the attack have not been published but the company informed customers of its Nissan Oceania division of a potential data breach, warning them that there is a risk of scams in the upcoming days. Nissan Oceania is a regional division of the famous Japanese automaker that covers distribution, marketing, sales, and services in Australia…

A statistician has come forward with disturbing information that, if correct, will promote doubt on the safety of mRNA vaccination for decades into the future. The whistleblower was involved with building and implementing the New Zealand government database vaccine payment system, a ‘pay per dose system’ that would remit payments to vaccination providers. In an interview with New Zealand journalist and lawyer Liz Gunn, and using a false name of Winston Smith, the statistician states that science is all about…