Nationwide gun amnesty in Australia from mid 2017

Australia will allow gun owners to hand in illegal firearms without penalty next year as concerns grow over gun crimes involving such weapons, a federal minister said on Friday.
Australia’s police and justice ministers agreed at a meeting to start a nationwide gun amnesty from the middle of 2017, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said.
“Australia is world-renowned for the strength of our firearm laws, but illegal firearms do remain a deadly weapon of choice for organized criminals,” Keenan told reporters.
It will be the first Australia-wide amnesty since a gun buy-back program in 1996 that followed a lone gunman killing 35 people in Tasmania state, Sydney University gun policy analyst Philip Alpers said.
That tragedy galvanized the government to legislate tough restrictions on rapid-fire weapons and to buy back almost 700,000 newly outlawed guns.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the nation has since imported almost 1.2 million legal guns, although none of them are military-style semi-automatic assault rifles that are now banned from public ownership.
An Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission report released Friday estimated there could be as many as 600,000 unregistered guns in Australia. There are 2.89 million registered guns among 24 million Australians, an increase of 9.3 percent in the past five years, the report said.
Most illegal guns in Australia were legally owned before 1996 when guns did not have to be registered. They were not handed in during the buy-back and there are no records that they even exist, the report said.
The market for illegal guns is partly driven by Middle Eastern crime gangs, outlaw motorbike clubs and other groups that traffic illegal commodities such as drugs, the report said.
It said that guns can be bought easily in the United States and sent to “countries such as Australia with relative anonymity, especially where transactions are made using emerging technologies and business practices, such as the darknet and freight-forwarding services.”
Alpers said overseas experience suggested that the Australian amnesty would collect only “rubbish guns” that were not valued by either legitimate gun owners or criminals.
The government plans to crack down on illegal guns by introducing a mandatory five-year minimum prison term for gun traffickers, as well as boosting screening of international mail, air and sea cargo.
-
Refugees from Myanmar may turn to extremism: Bangladesh foreign minister
Myanmar nationals staying in Bangladesh as refugees could turn to extremism, Bangladesh foreign minister AK Abdul Momen said on Saturday, as he sought help from India and other countries in the region to repatriate them. External affairs minister S Jaishankar, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and ambassadors and high commissioners of several southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, attended the session.
-
Porn clips played on display screens at airport in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro
Passengers at an airport in Brazil's second-largest city of Rio de Janeiro were in for a shock when electronic displays at the facility began showing pornographic scenes--instead of advertisements and flight information--in an apparent case of hacking. Santos Dumont is the second airport in Rio de Janeiro, after the main Gaelao International Airport. Named after Brazilian aviation pioneer, Alberto Santos Dumont, it is both a public and military facility.
-
At least 31 die in church stampede in southern Nigeria
At least 31 people died in Nigeria on Saturday during a stampede at a church in the southern Rivers state, a police spokesperson said. Hundreds of people who had turned up to receive food at the church early on Saturday broke through a gate, causing the stampede, police spokesperson for Rivers state, Grace Iringe-Koko said.
-
Putin willing to discuss resuming Ukrainian grain shipments from Black Sea ports
The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin told the leaders of France and Germany on Saturday that Moscow was willing to discuss ways to make it possible for Ukraine to resume shipments of grain from Black Sea ports. Putin spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over the phone.
-
After Uvalde tragedy, a Texas school says staff can carry guns on campus
In the wake of Tuesday's shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers before being fatally shot by the police, the only school in the small town of Utopia, also in Texas, has said its teachers and staff can carry guns on campus to prevent an Uvalde-like tragedy.