MPs call for e-voting:

Australians have elected a divided parliament stacked with fractious independents and minor parties but the nation’s weary political leaders are united on at least one front: the need for electronic voting.

Counting in Australia’s July 2 election dragged into its 10th day on Tuesday, drawing unfavourable comparisons with Japan, Iceland and Spain, where recent elections were all decided in less than a day.

Britons took just seven hours to calculate their contentious Brexit vote to leave the European Union last month.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition leader Bill Shorten have backed e-voting as a solution to Australia’s snail-paced count, although experts warn of security issues and others bemoan the potential loss of typically Australian election day quirks like the “sausage sizzle”.

Shorten said on Sunday, after already more than a week of hand-counting of ballot papers, that it shouldn’t take “a grown-up democracy” so long to figure out who has won.

Counting in Australia, where voting is compulsory, is usually resolved on the same evening that Australia’s 15 million voters cast their ballots.(RTRS)

HK tycoon freed on bail:

Hong Kong Sri Lankan member of parliament Namal Rajapakse (center), the son of former president Mahinda Rajapakse, is taken in handcuffs after he was remanded in custody for a week in Colombo on July 11. Rajapakse, who is the opposition’s shadow

foreign minister, was accused of money laundering. (AFP)