World
Price hikes and fuel hording are symptoms of what is being rumored to be a China-caused fuel shortage.
Signs have popped up around Pyongyang that restrictions on sales would be in place until further notice.
North Korea gets most of its fuel from its neighbor, China, which has joined the U.S. in a much stronger stance against North Korea’s continued military aggravation.
The Faroe Islands are experiencing a woman shortage.
The Island’s population is 50,000, and they have a “gender deficit” of 2,000 more men than women.
Increasingly, Faroese men are bringing women in from Asia, and there are currently 300 women from Thailand and the Phillipines, and Asians now make up the largest ethnic minority.
The immigrants are also very active in the Faroes’ work force.
While finding a husband may be fairly easy, the tropical women are having a difficult time with the cold, wet climate, lack of even English speakers, and sometime remote and isolated lifestyles.
Indonesian female clerics issued a fatwa (nothing legal but a matter of religion) after holding a 3-day meeting.
They also want the government there to make marriage illegal for women under 18. Currently, 16 is the marriage age.
According to the UN, 1/4 of Indonesian women marry before they are 18.
The fatwa is unusual because most are issued by the highest Islamic authority, the Ulema Council, which is mostly men.
Protest over President Michel Temer’s austerity measures are crippling public transport in several major cities, and many factories, businesses and schools are closed, including in major tourist areas.
Police have barricaded protesters from entering airports (some flights were delayed and cancelled earlier) and are trying to clear up roadways.
Brazil has not had a nationwide strike in over 20 years. The current protests are not yet at the ‘nationwide strike’ level, but threaten to get there, according to union leaders.
Temer assumed power after former President Dilma Rousseff was ousted. Temer was then vice president.
The cause of the protests: Brazil’s lower house passed a labor reform bill many see as undermining workers’ rights by eliminating payment for their commute from their contractors, reducing compensation for employer abuse, and allowing reduction of salaries and increasing hours.
Citizens are protesting the government after a March 20 attempt by the country’s highest court to dissolve the national assembly, which would in turn weaken President Maduro’s opponents.
The Australian Federal Police announced this week that they illegally obtained a journalist’s phone records under the Turnbull government’s new metadata retention plan.
The breach was accidental, according to the police, and happened as part of an investigation into a leak of police material.
The journalist was not notified about their data being accessed, due to the sensitive nature of the police work, AFP said.
“This was human error … . There was no ill will or malice or bad intent by the officers involved who breached the Act. But simply it was a mistake.”
AFP said their practices would now see “significant changes.”
A formal judgement has approved the administrative measure, indicating that a permanent restriction is now in place for all language editions of the online encyclopedia in Turkey.
Some are pointing towards Wikipedia’s depiction of Erdogan as a dictator as a cause:
“Erdoğan detractors have noted that under Erdoğan, more journalists have been incarcerated in Turkey than in any other country, including North Korea. Detractors have also pointed out the fact that the April referendum essentially nullified the traditional legal ‘check’ of parliamentary fiscal review, that parliament had previously held over his executive branch of government. Detractors have claimed that Erdoğan’s unceasing efforts at broadening his executive powers while also minimizing his executive accountability may amount to the ‘fall of Turkish democracy,’ and the ‘birth of a dictator.’
“The loss of availability is consistent with internet filters used to censor content in the country,” according to independent, non-partisan network monitoring observatory Turkey Blocks.
“SSL errors are issued for https requests, indicating failing to connect to the authentic servers, while the unencrypted addresses now return an nginx http 404 error indicative of filtering.”
For the first time in Japan, the country responded to a North Korean test by shutting down the rails for 10 minutes, effecting 13,000 passengers.
The association of Japanese toilet makers announced the symbols they will collectively use as a standardized language for toilet / bidet functions.
The Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association made the announcement Tuesday, presenting eight signs and their functions.
The move will simplify Japanese life to a degree, since the many companies that produce toilets / bidets since they were first made in 1964 have come up with their own symbols.
For the occasion of a visit by Sheikh Faisal Bin Khaled, Emir of Asir province, January 11, in Majardh city, municipal workers apply a cosmetic veneer to parks. They were observed by several townspeople equipped with mobile phones.
On January 12, a day after the prince ‘s visit , officials in the city issued a statement in which they confessed colored grass. They pointed out that the material used was not regular paint, but a special paint for herbs sold in gardening shops.
But this did not prevent other citizens from complaining about other initiatives carried out by the municipal authorities hastily for the occasion of the visit of Prince.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has called the “War on Terror” the “new battle government should prepare for.”
“There will be wars. We have to prepare for Terrorism. Whether you like it or not, the new war coming is ‘Terrorism,’” said Duterte at a press conference this week.
Terrorist groups are expanding from traditional battlegrounds to new areas, including the Philippines, said Duterte. “Their world, their battleground in the Middle East, keeps getting smaller and smaller,” but the same impetus is motivating actions around the world, he said.
ISIS has recognized a number of Philippines Islamist jihadist groups.
The Philippine Armed Forces (AFP) also held their first conference of 2017 this week, focussing on the destruction of local and international terrorist groups operating in the country. The top priority, according to officials, is to quash groups like Abu Sayyaf multi-group and others on the islands, which includes enhancing engagement with stakeholder communities, including local and religious leaders. The AFP is balancing this project with two other main projects: the peace process with the Communist Party and the War on Drugs.
The United States, at Saturday’s UN meeting, abstained from voting in support of Israel, which most observers consider a break from America’s traditional support of Israel at the UN table. A vote from America would have vetoed the bill.
The bill condemned Israel for its settlements and construction projects in Palestinian territory, stating that Israel was in this in flagrant violation of international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day summoned US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, and the meeting is scheduled for Sunday night.
Israel also summoned ambassadors from China, France, Russia, Angola, Egypt, Japan, Spain, Ukraine and Uruguay to meet.
“Over decades American administrations and Israeli governments have disagreed about settlements, but we agreed the Security Council was not the place to resolve this issue,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu also told CNN he had trustworthy information that President Barack Obama helped push the UN resolution and helped craft it.
The US government responded to this by saying that they didn’t draft it; Egypt and Palestine did.
U.S. government spokespeople are claiming that the move — considered by most observers to be a sudden break from tradition and a “parting shot” by Obama against Israel — was in line with the U.S.’s longstanding position on the matter.