Daily News Roundup

Friday October 29th

Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced the state’s borders will open to most of New South Wales, but not everyone will be allowed in.

As of 1:00am on November 3, Queensland is set to open to New South Wales, but will remain closed to Greater Sydney and Victoria, due to concerns around lingering community transmission in the southern states

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Walmart says it has removed ammunition and firearms from displays at its stores in the United States, citing “isolated civil unrest” in the country.

The nation’s largest retailer, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, sells firearms in about half of its 4,700 stores.

“We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers,” Walmart said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

The discounter said the items remain available for purchase by customers.

The move comes after several days of protests, widespread vandalism and an overnight curfew in Philadelphia after police fatally shot a black man with a history of mental health problems.

Walmart made a similar move in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd that set off sometimes violent demonstrations against police brutality and injustice against African Americans.

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France has lifted its security alert status to the highest level after a knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” killed three people in a church in the city of Nice.

A defiant President Emmanuel Macron, declaring that France had been subject to an Islamist terrorist attack, said he would deploy thousands more soldiers to protect important French sites, such as places of worship and schools.

Speaking from the scene, he said France had been attacked “over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief”.

“And I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground.”

France’s chief anti-terror prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said the attacker was a Tunisian national, born in 1999, who had recently entered France from Italy.

A Tunisian security source and a French police source told Reuters the suspect’s name was Brahim Aouissaoui.

Mr Ricard said one of the women had her throat cut. A police source earlier told Reuters that the victim had been beheaded. France’s Le Monde newspaper called it an “attempted” beheading.

Mr Ricard said the attacker arrived in Italy by reaching the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on September 20, and then travelled to Paris on October 9.

The travel information came from an Italian Red Cross document found on the attacker, he said.

The Associated Press quoted Italian media reports as saying the attacker spent two weeks in quarantine on a ship off the eastern coastal town of Bari in

ENDS