News Headlines - 22 November 2017

▽Dramatic video shows North Korean soldier's escape across border - CNN

Dramatic video showing a North Korean soldier fleeing across the border into South Korea while being shot at by his former comrades was released by the United Nations Command Wednesday.

▽April 30 most likely date for Emperor Akihito's abdication: government sources | The Japan Times

The government looks likely to choose April 30, 2019, as the date for Emperor Akihito’s abdication, with Crown Prince Naruhito’s succession to the throne to follow on May 1, a government source said Wednesday.

▽Wage theft endemic across Australia

The new report presents the most comprehensive Australian research conducted into the systemic underpayment of international students, backpackers and other temporary migrants around the country. It paints a bleak picture of the conditions experienced by a high proportion of the more than 900,000 temporary migrant workers who represent more than 10 per cent of the Australian labour market.

▽Belgium's Justice Minister calls for loot box ban in Europe | PC Gamer

According to Belgian news site RTBF, Belgium's Gaming Commission has not actually finalized its decision on whether loot boxes are gambling. The site says the statement that appeared in the original report, stating that the "mixture of money and addiction is a game of chance," is descriptive of the investigation's intent rather than its conclusion.

▽Lu Wei: China has detained a key architect of its massive internet censorship regime — Quartz

State media outlet Xinhua reported late Nov. 21 that the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s main corruption-busting agency, has placed former internet czar Lu Wei, under investigation. The revelation marks the fall of a once high-flying political figure who was one of the leading figures behind China’s efforts to police the internet within its borders. But there should be no illusion the move to investigate him signals a change in policy—almost as a reminder of that, news surfaced that Skype disappeared from China’s app stores around the same time as the investigation was announced.