AUSTRALIA: Personal details of almost 50,000 Australian workers have been compromised in the country’s largest data breach since the Red Cross leaks, British analysts Synopsys said yesterday.

Up to 48,270 personal records from employees working in government agencies, banks and a utility have been exposed online by a third-party contractor.

The files exposed include full names, passwords, identification details, phone numbers, and email addresses as well as some credit card numbers and details of staff salaries and expenses.

MYANMAR: De facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited western Rakhine state yesterday for the first time in the month-old refugee crisis prompted by the army’s brutal ethnic cleansing campaign.

State Counsellor Suu Kyi arrived in the state capital Sittwe in the morning and then headed to Maungdaw in the north.

On Tuesday, government spokesman Zaw Htay said Myanmar was ready to begin taking back Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Bangladesh, “but we have not reached an agreement with the Bangladeshi authorities.”

TURKEY: The armed forces said eight soldiers and five Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerillas had been killed in a battle near the south-eastern border with Iraq yesterday morning.

A military statement said the skirmish erupted near the town of Semdinli, after security forces spotted a group of separatists preparing to launch an attack.

It said the dead included two village guards, who are recruited from among the local Kurdish population.

NORTHERN IRELAND: Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British PM Theresa May are still optimistic of a power-sharing deal being reached at Stormont after the latest breakdown in talks, Dublin said yesterday.

In a phone call, the two leaders said the divide between the DUP and Sinn Fein was narrow, Mr Varadkar’s office said.

“Both leaders also expressed the view that it is still possible to form an executive which would be in the interests of all the people of Northern Ireland,” an Irish government spokesman said.