Squiz Today – Wednesday, 30 May

SQUIZ SAYINGS

“Mere. Championne. Reine. Deesse.”

Or in English, ‘Mother, Champion, Queen, Goddess.' Words that adorn tennis great Serena Williams' French Open warm-up ‘cape' that set fashion-watchers alight yesterday. Not that we needed reminding…

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FOCUS BACK ON THE PLIGHT OF ROHINGYA MUSLIMS

THE SQUIZ
International human rights advocates were outraged yesterday after Reuters reported that seven Myanmar soldiers jailed for the 2017 massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys had been released from jail. The soldiers had been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment but were released in November last year after serving less than a year for the killings at Inn Din village. As the news outlet noted; “They also served less jail time than two Reuters reporters who uncovered the killings.”

BACK IT UP A BIT...
It’s a humanitarian disaster that will soon enter its third year.

• Predominantly a Buddhist country, Myanmar long denied the Rohingya Muslims citizenship. They had been viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

• Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown in mid-2017 after Rohingya militants launched attacks on local police. Myanmar’s military hit back killing at least 6,700 (including 730 children) in what the United Nations called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Nearly 700,000 Rohingya subsequently fled to Bangladesh over a two-month period.

• National leader/former Nobel Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi was criticised for failing to use her position to stop the atrocities.

SO WHERE ARE THINGS UP TO?
Well, almost three years later, the Rohingya refugees who fled over the border remain in refugee camps in Bangladesh, which has told the UN that it can not accept any more people. Despite agreements made to repatriate the stateless minority to Rakhine State in Myanmar, the country has been accused of dragging its heels. And the Rohingya aren’t keen on going back either. Meanwhile, the UN recently despaired of the lack of action to resolve the issue or prosecute Myanmar’s military leaders. And Myanmar continues to deny any wrongdoing in any of it.

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SQUIZ THE REST

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MASS STABBING LEAVES GIRL AND MAN DEAD

Three people died in total (including the perpetrator) when a man in his 50s went on a violent rampage in the Japanese city of Kawasaki yesterday morning. Seventeen people were injured, including young school children. Many of the victims were waiting for a bus to take them to school. In Japan yesterday still on his state visit, US President Donald Trump said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the victims, while PM Abe Shinzo said; "children's safety should be protected at any cost.” No motive for the attack has been revealed.

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BRAZILIAN PRISON RIOTS CLAIM MORE THAN 40 LIVES

Reports say the men were found dead across several prisons on Monday. The strangling deaths were “discovered” by staff as they went about their checks. Which raises more questions than we could find answers to… Except to say that authorities attributed the violence to drug gangs whose activities go mostly unchecked in the clink. One report noted that "For decades they [prisons] have been badly overcrowded and out of the control of local authorities, essentially serving as recruiting centres for drug gangs.” Yikes…

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KIWI BUDGET A BIG MOMENT FOR ARDERN

Put it in your diary for tomorrow. Or not, it's up to you... But Kiwiland's PM Jacinda Ardern will not only announce her government's budget for the coming year, but she's also launching a ‘wellbeing budget’ that aims at measuring public welfare. Ardern has previously said it’s about “bringing kindness and empathy to governance” and that it’s necessary to meet voters’ expectations. “This is not woolly, it's critical," she said earlier this year. (And as a side point, it’s something Labor’s newly installed leader Anthony Albanese has also picked up on…) Meanwhile, others are concerned about old fashioned threats to the economy, like labour shortages.

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BLOOD DONORS NEEDED

It’s relatively early in the flu season, but it's already had an impact. The Red Cross Blood Service has called for 6,000 additional people to come forward to donate blood in the next couple of weeks after heaps of regular donors cancelled their appointments because of illness. So if you’re an eligible person with some blood to spare, you might think about helping out.

And while we’re talking all things cardiovascular… The Heart Foundation’s pulse would have raced yesterday after criticism came its way over a new ad campaign that some thought was, for want of a better word, heartless.

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SOMEONE FOUND THE WINTER SWITCH…

You didn’t have to be one of the eight people who were rescued after being trapped by a sudden downfall of snow on Victoria’s Mount Hotham to know it’s cold all of a sudden in our country’s south-east. And one of our favourite sub-genres of reporting - weather events - has not disappointed. It’s a “polar jet”, said one understated analysis. All we know is it’s cold in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Canberra and everywhere in between, and will be for a few more days to come. But while temperatures have fallen, rain has not. Sydney will move onto water restrictions on Saturday after a period of the lowest inflows into the city’s water storages since 1940.

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APROPOS OF NOTHING

Queensland’s happiest supermarket trolley collector. Dare you to read this and not smile.

Death-defying cheese hounds have braved the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling Race in Gloucestershire for another year. Track condition: downhill and hard.

If you caught up with Friday Lites last week, you might remember the incredible Twitter thread by an American bloke called Shane Morris going through a risky adventure. It turns out it was all a lie, and he has deleted his account. But he has penned an interesting mea culpa.

SQUIZ THE DAY

10.00am (AEST) - Morrison Government to be sworn in - Canberra

ABS Data Release - National Health Survey: First Results, 2017-18

International Day of UN Peacekeepers

White Wreath Day

Nepal’s National Day

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and sherpa Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to reach the summit (1953)