Category: Western Media

GENEVA – Rising temperatures are making it increasingly difficult to reach global health goals. There is a risk of more than nine million climate-related deaths each year by the end of the century, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). “All aspects of health are affected by climate change – from clean air, water and soil to food systems and livelihoods,” the WHO said in its annual World Health Statistics report released on Friday. “Further delay in tackling climate change…

SINGAPORE – Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC has tied up with Brookfield India Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) to acquire two prime commercial real estate assets in India for a combined enterprise value of around US$1.4 billion (S$1.89 billion). The assets, to be acquired from Brookfield Asset Management’s private real estate funds, have a total area of 6.5 million square feet. They include commercial properties in Downtown Powai, a mixed-use development in Mumbai, and Candor TechSpace in Sector 48 of…

BEIJING – China is considering transferring government ownership in the nation’s biggest bad debt managers to a unit of its sovereign wealth fund as part of a financial regulatory regime overhaul, according to people familiar with the matter. Under the current proposal, the Ministry of Finance will move its stakes in China Cinda Asset Management, China Great Wall Asset Management and China Orient Asset Management to Central Huijin Investment, said the people, asking not to be identified. China Investment Corp…

Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the U.S., has sued a Florida county school board over its decisions to ban and restrict access to books. Joining the lawsuit are five authors, two parents of students and the advocacy group PEN America. A new federal lawsuit alleges that recent decisions by officials in a Florida county to ban and restrict access to books in school libraries violates constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection under the law. Over the…

  WASHINGTON – The Pentagon overestimated the value of the ammunition, missiles and other equipment it sent to Ukraine by around US$3 billion (S$4.05 billion), a Senate aide and a defense official said on Thursday, an error that may lead the way for more weapons being sent to Kyiv for its defense against Russian forces. The error was the result of assigning a higher than warranted value on weaponry that was taken from US stocks and then shipped to Ukraine,…

  LONDON – Ukraine has rejected a Chinese suggestion to consider an immediate ceasefire in the country’s war with Russia. In a statement issued on Wednesday after a day of closed-door meetings with Ambassador Li Hui, China’s special mediator in the conflict, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said: “Ukraine does not accept any proposals that would involve the loss of its territories or the freezing of the conflict.” The failed diplomatic effort comes just as the war is growing in…

LONDON – Governments are increasingly focusing on health risks fuelled by global warming, with most nations now considering concerns from malaria to heart disease in their climate plans, according to data shared exclusively by the World Health Organisation (WHO). More than 90 per cent of countries have included health hazards in their commitments to tackle climate change, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), up from 70 per cent in 2020, according to new WHO data set to be released in…

BENGALURU – Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay US$75 million (S$100.6 million) to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging the lender facilitated the late Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, The Wall Street Journal reported late on Wednesday, citing lawyers who sued the bank on behalf of alleged victims.

The suit was filed in 2022 in New York by an anonymous woman on behalf of herself and other accusers, alleging Deutsche Bank did business with Epstein for five years knowing he was engaged in sex-trafficking activity, the report said.

Deutsche Bank did not immediately reply to a Reuters’ request for comment. REUTERS

SYDNEY – Air China has swamped an Australian flight school with a request for commercial pilots, a sudden demand that points to a looming rebound as the vast Chinese market resumes international travel. Air China had stopped sending its trainees to the Australian Airline Pilot Academy campus in regional Victoria state after the pandemic halted overseas travel in early 2020. But talks resumed two months ago and the giant state-run carrier, almost out of nowhere, pushed the school to interview…

PARIS – A French appeals court on Wed nesday upheld a prison sentence of three years, including two suspended, against former president Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption and influence peddling. The court ruled he should serve one year in detention at home with an electronic bracelet and banned him from public office for three years. He had been found guilty over his attempts to secure favours from a judge in return for the promise of a plum retirement job in a case…

  WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense asked Congress to authorize the transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as part of the trilateral AUKUS agreement with the U.K. Three legislative proposals, submitted on May 2 and first posted online Tuesday, would greenlight the sale of two Virginia-class submarines to Australia, permit the training of Australian nationals for submarine work and allow Canberra to invest in the U.S. submarine industrial base. Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on…

Russia has frozen the bank accounts of Finland’s diplomatic representations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, disrupting money flow and forcing the Nordic country’s missions to resort to cash payments, the Finnish foreign minister said Wednesday. Pekka Haavisto said Moscow’s move at the end of April breached the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Helsinki had delivered a diplomatic note on the matter to Russia. “We’re not alone with the money traffic problem,” Haavisto told reporters during a news conference. “Also,…

  It turns out that if you fire basically all of the competent trust & safety people at your website, you end up with a site that is neither trustworthy, nor safe. We’ve spent months covering ways in which you cannot trust anything from Twitter or Elon Musk, and there have been some indications of real safety problems on the site, but it’s been getting worse lately, with two somewhat terrifying stories that show just how unsafe the site has…

SAN FRANCISCO – Fallen US biotech star Elizabeth Holmes must begin serving prison time after a judge denied her latest request to remain free while appealing her fraud conviction. Holmes was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors with her Silicon Valley start-up Theranos. She was scheduled to begin serving prison time on April 27, but her lawyers lodged a last-minute appeal on procedural issues after an earlier attempt was denied. US Judge Edward Davila on…

Canada must become the “best of friends” with South Korea, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told lawmakers in Seoul on Wednesday, as the two countries seek to counter China’s growing regional influence. Trudeau is on his first official visit to South Korea, where he will meet President Yoon Suk Yeol. “I’m here to tell you that it’s no longer enough to be friends. We need to be the best of friends,” Trudeau said during a speech to Seoul’s National Assembly. He…

The number of people in the UK not working because of long-term sickness has risen to a record high partly because of ongoing health problems related to the coronavirus pandemic, official figures showed Tuesday. The Office for National Statistics found that 2.55 million people were not able to work in the three months to March, which is over 6% of the country’s working population. That was up nearly 100,000 on the previous quarter. The agency said the pandemic is likely…