4.7 million: Australia’s government said today that 4.7 million social media accounts belonging to teenagers were deactivated in the first two days after a first-of-its-kind ban on social media for users under 16 took effect on Dec. 10 last year. Even so, many teenagers have said they’ve been able to get around the ban by lying about their age.
59: The center-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito – a former partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – have announced plans to join forces ahead of Japan’s expected snap election. Together, the two parties hold 59 of the 248 seats in the upper house of National Diet and hope to present a robust challenge to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s LDP.
33,000: The telecommunications giant Verizon experienced an outage across parts of the northeastern US yesterday, prompting nearly 33,000 complaints among roughly 146 million customers. The company has since resolved the issue but hasn’t yet provided a reason for the outage.
1: Pritam Singh, secretary general of Singapore’s Workers’ Party and the first person to hold the title of “Leader of the Opposition,” was stripped of his title by the ruling People’s Action Party after he was convicted of lying under oath to a parliamentary committee. Singh maintains his innocence, but will now lose privileges like the right of first reply during parliamentary debates.
2 million: Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said that two million Ukrainians are dodging the draft, and that another 200,000 of its active soldiers are absent without leave. The announcement comes as Ukraine’s soldiers struggle to hold their positions and their morale. All men aged 18 to 60 are required to register with the military, and all those aged 25 to 60 are subject to mobilization.
