WORLD BRIEFS

Donald skirts ‘bomb’ claim

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump said Wednesday, 5 August, the deadly Beirut explosion may have been an accident, after raising eyebrows earlier suggesting it was an attack.

Trump said it is still unclear what happened, although Lebanese officials have blamed the massive eruption on a poorly secured stockpile of highly volatile fertilizer ingredient ammonium nitrate.

On Tuesday he said it appeared to have been caused by a “bomb of some kind,” citing unnamed US “generals” for the information. “It looks like a terrible attack,” he said.

But on Wednesday the US leader said the question was still unanswered, as he pledged US support to Lebanon.

TikTok data misuse null — Aussie PM

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States (AFP) — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday, 4 August, there was no evidence that Chinese-owned TikTok had abused the data of its hundreds of millions of users.

“We have had a good look at this, and there is no evidence for us to suggest that there is any misuse of any people’s data,” he told the Aspen Security Forum meeting in Aspen, Colorado.

“There are plenty of things that are on TikTok that are embarrassing enough in public, but it’s that sort of social media device,” he said via videoconference, chuckling.

However, he said, Australians need to be “very aware” that TikTok and other social media platforms, including US-owned companies, reap enormous amounts of information on users and subscribers.

The difference with TikTok, he said, is “that information can be accessed at a sovereign state level,” a reference to Chinese companies’ legal obligation to share data with state intelligence services if they want it.

Lebanese together in solidarity and rage

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — In Beirut’s beloved bar districts, hundreds of young Lebanese ditched beers for brooms on Wednesday, 5 August, to sweep debris in the absence of a state-sponsored cleanup operation following a deadly blast.

“What state?” scoffed 42-year-old Melissa Fadlallah, a volunteer cleaning up the hard-hit Mar Mikhail district of the Lebanese capital.

The explosion, which hit just a few hundred meters away at Beirut’s port, blew all the windows and doors off Mar Mikhail’s pubs, restaurants, and apartment homes on Tuesday.

By Wednesday, a spontaneous cleanup operation was underway there, a glimmer of youthful solidarity and hope after a devastating night.

Wearing plastic gloves and a mask, Fadlallah tossed a shard of glass as long as her arm at the door of the state electricity company’s administrative building that looms over the district.

“For me, this state is a dump — and on behalf of yesterday’s victims, the dump that killed them is going to stay a dump,” she told