The Loop: Guilty verdict in Ahmaud Arbery trial, religious discrimination bill to be introduced, researchers find a mammoth tusk in the ocean, and the country with too much halloumi

Good morning, starshine!

It's Thursday, November 25. Here's what you need to get going today.

One thing to know right now: The white trio charged over the death of black man Ahmaud Arbery has been found guilty of murder

A mural of Ahmaud Arbery painted on the side of The Brunswick African American Cultural Center in Brunswick, Georgia. (Reuters: Octavio Jones)

Here's the lowdown:

• Mr Arbery, 25, was out on a jog in the US state of Georgia in February 2020 when Greg McMichael and his son Travis McMichael jumped in a pick-up truck to pursue him
• The McMichaels' neighbour William "Roddie" Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded a mobile phone video of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Mr Arbery
• The convictions came after jurors deliberated for about 10 hours

• Though state prosecutors didn't argue that racism motivated the killing, federal authorities have charged the men with hate crimes, alleging that they chased and killed Mr Arbery because he was black — that case is scheduled to go to trial in February

One thing you’ll be hearing about today: the religious discrimination bill

• The Prime Minister is expected to introduce it in Parliament today, but voting on the bill is expected to be delayed until next year after it undergoes further scrutiny by a Senate committee.

• The bill was first promised in the wake of the same-sex marriage debate in 2017, with a first draft released in 2019

• In a nutshell, the bill says religious bodies can "generally" act in accordance with their faith in certain situations without it being discriminatory — like a religious school being able to turn away students who don't practise that religion 

• But the legislation has been watered down from its first draft, with the scrapping of a proposal to allow medical workers to refuse treatment to people for religious reasons

• Labor is yet to decide whether it will support the bill and is withholding comment until it sees the full legislation in the Senate

News while you snoozed

Let's get you up to speed.

• A French mayor says at least 31 people have died trying to cross the English Channel. Officials say it's the worst disaster involving migrants in the waterway
• Magdalena Andersson became Sweden's first female Prime Minister, but she resigned from the role the same day she was elected after her party suffered a budget defeat in parliament
• North Melbourne selected South Australian midfielder Jason Horne-Francis with the first pick in the 2021 AFL draft
• The Kid LAROI won the ARIA award for Best Artist, beating Keith Urban, Vance Joy, Kylie Minogue and Tones And I to take home the big pointy prize. It's the first time the prize has been non-gendered

The Kid LAROI's song Stay, which features Justin Bieber, has gone triple platinum.

The news Australia is searching for

• Byron Bay lockdown: The Aquarius Backpackers hostel in the tourist hotspot has been plunged into lockdown after a guest tested positive for COVID-19. All 84 guests will be locked down for a week, with police monitoring the hostel to make sure no guests leave 
• Mammoth tusk: Researchers exploring deep waters along California's coastline found something you just wouldn't expect to see on the bottom of the ocean: a mammoth tusk. It was spotted about 300 kilometres offshore and 3 kilometres deep. They think the cold waters helped preserve the tusk, which is thought to be more than 100,000 years old

They originally spotted the tusk in 2019, but were only able to confirm it belonged to a Columbian mammoth this year.  (Supplied: Darrin Schultz, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute )

One more thing: lockdowns leave Cyprus with 6 million kilos of unwanted halloumi

All those COVID-19 lockdowns meant brunches were off the table (well, the cafe tables, anyway).

The squeaky cheese is, for many, a key brunch ingredient, but global demand for halloumi went into a nosedive. 

That resulted in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus being stuck with a 6 million kilogram stockpile of its prized white halloumi.

Cyprus has too much halloumi as stocks build during the pandemic. (Reuters: Yiannis Kourtoglou)

The Cypriot government is mobilising its embassies abroad to help shift the backlog, hoping to find buyers for its stockpiles outside of the European Union.

But cheesemakers fear that if they flood the market, the price of halloumi will significantly drop.

TL;DR: halloumi could soon be as cheap as chips. 

That's it for now

We'll be back later on with more of the good stuff.

ABC/wires