Bhinneka News Online: Thursday Briefing: Winter storm pulls away from Texas, but millions still without power

Thursday, 18 February 2021

Thursday Briefing: Winter storm pulls away from Texas, but millions still without power

TODAY'S TOP STORIES

Millions are still without power in Texas, Facebook 'unfriends' Australia and protesters are out again in Myanmar

The winter storm that crippled the Texas electrical grid is moving out of the state, but freezing temperatures remain, hampering attempts to restore full power as residents struggle.

Texas residents suffering a winter storm that has left millions without power are set to face a future challenge in higher utility bills.

The brutal cold snap that has frozen Texas hasn’t only numbed unprepared people to the bone - thousands of turtles have been caught off-guard too.

With the rancorous 2020 U.S. election now over, Democrats and Republicans are girding for another national political battle with enormous stakes: redistricting.

In Los Angeles County, a COVID-19 vaccination site specifically for educators will open soon, school officials said, as teachers in the area’s largest school district demand vaccine access before returning to in-person learning.

World

Facebook faced an angry backlash after blocking news feeds in Australia in a surprise escalation of a dispute with the government which could be a test for the future of online publishing worldwide.

A Belarusian court sentenced two Belarusian journalists from Poland-based TV news channel Belsat who filmed protests against President Alexander Lukashenko to two years in prison.

Protesters demonstrated across Myanmar again to denounce the Feb. 1 military coup and arrest of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and police forcefully dispersed crowds, using water cannon in the capital and catapults in a northern town.

The Kremlin said that a call by the European Court of Human Rights for Russia to free jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny amounted to meddling in its internal affairs and that Moscow viewed that as unacceptable.

Japanese athlete-turned-politician Seiko Hashimoto has been chosen as president of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing committee, replacing a man who resigned after setting off a furore with sexist remarks.

Business

Wall Street hedge fund managers, the chief executives of Robinhood and Reddit, and a YouTube streamer known as Roaring Kitty face a grilling from U.S. lawmakers over the Reddit rally in shares of GameStop.

U.S. workplace safety regulators have announced more than $4 million in penalties on more than 300 employers they say put workers at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tesla has reduced the price of its cheaper variants of the Model 3 sedan and the Model Y sports utility vehicle, while raising prices for their performance variants, the electric-car maker’s website showed.

All the talk was of Frankfurt or Paris luring London’s financial business as Britain peeled away from the EU. Yet it is Amsterdam that is proving the most visible early winner.