World News Briefs For Saturday, 31 August 2019
Hey There Australia!! - Uncertainty in Hong Kong this weekend - The most powerful storm in decades is stalking Florida - The scars are torn open in Peter Dutton's Home Affairs Department - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement has called off Saturday's planned protests after three prominent movement leaders were arrested. Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow are under investigation for their roles in an "unauthorized" demonstration before police headquarters on 21 June. They're out on bail; another protest leader, Andy Chan, was also arrested. Authorities also banned the protest that was to happen later today, and it is unclear if the more hard-core members of the democracy movement will be out there on the streets, challenging police.
Immigration officials have detained a Tamil family whose plight and love for Australia have captured the nation, and taken them to Christmas Island. Technically, that's allowed under the temporary orders restraining officials from deporting the mother, father, and two Australian-born toddler girls, and the orders expire on Wednesday. The family faces danger and discrimination if they are deported back to Sri Lanka, but that seems to be the intent of immigration authorities. "As a member of the Tamil community, we're all heartbroken by how this family has been treated by our government," Tamil Refugee Council spokesman Aran Mylvaganam.
Morale is so low in Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton's department that thousands of seasoned employees what to quit. The annual employee census of almost 10,000 Home Affairs workers detail allegations of a horror show of bullying, harassment, and poor management - ranking it as the worst agency for staff engagement across the Australian public service. The department faces an unprecedented "brain drain" as almost 40 percent of people surveyed admitted that they've applied for work outside the department and expect to leave within a year.
Twitter is investigating how the personal account of CEO Jack Dorsey fell under the control of hackers calling themselves "the chuckling squad", who spent 15 minutes or so tweeting out childish, offensive, and racist messages. The company eventually regained control of the @jack account. Simultaneously, a chat thread appeared on the gaming platform Discord - one of the favored Internet hangouts of young far-right extremists cheering on mass shootings in the US - discussing the hack. It is unclear how the perpetrator(s) gained access to Dorsey's account.
Colombian troops killed nine suspected FARC rebels, a day after dissident FARC commander Ivan Marquez exhorted his faction to return to arms and abandon the peace process.
Hurricane Dorian has strengthened to a Category Four storm and is heading towards central Florida, with landfall expected late Monday or early Tuesday local time. That is stronger than earlier computer models had projected. Tourists are bailing out of the state on the critical Labor Day holiday weekend, while store shelves have been stripped of essentials like toilet paper, food, water, and lumber to board-up the windows.
Actress Valerie Harper is dead at age 80. She played the neighbor and best friend Rhoda Morgenstern on the "Mary Tyler Moore" TV show in the early 1970s, and got her own spin-off "Rhoda" (btw, 52 million Americans watched the wedding episode of that sitcom.. That's like every single Australian and half the kangaroos all tuning in to one show). Both shows were landmarks in that they featured female central characters whose existences did not revolve around their relationships with men; Rhoda and Joe would later divorce on the show, and Rhoda's life went on.