Category: business-economy

WHITSTABLE, United Kingdom – Pensioner Chris Stanley became so incensed by water companies dumping wastewater into the sea near his home that four years ago he stopped paying his bills. To his dismay, things have not improved. “They released sewage water last week on Friday, (and) Sunday night, and on Monday, the beach was declared not safe for swimming,” said Mr Stanley, 82, a regular swimmer, whose home overlooks the sea from the south-eastern town of Whitstable. The Southern Water…

BERLIN – Germany plans to reintroduce compulsory screening for military service for 18-year-old men as part of plans to ramp up defence capabilities, a defence ministry source said on July 24. Conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made boosting Germany’s threadbare military a key priority given the threat from Russia and US President Donald Trump’s questioning of the traditional American security umbrella for Europe. The drive for now aims to attract volunteers to the armed forces, but includes provisions for compulsory…

BRUSSELS – The European Union plans to quickly hit the US with 30 per cent tariffs on some €100 billion (S$149.78 billion) worth of goods in the event of no deal and if US President Donald Trump carries through with his threat to impose that rate on most of the bloc’s exports after Aug 1. As a part of a first wave of countermeasures, the EU would combine an already approved list of tariffs on €21 billion of US goods…

Microsoft Corp warned that Chinese state-sponsored hackers are among those exploiting flaws in its SharePoint software to break into institutions globally, with the US agency responsible for designing nuclear weapons now among those breached. In a blog post, the tech giant identified two groups supported by the Chinese government, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, as leveraging flaws in the document-sharing software that rendered customers who run it on their own networks, as opposed to in the cloud, vulnerable. Another hacking…

Sanctions can cause as many fatalities as armed conflict, with unilateral penalties being associated with more than half a million deaths per year, according to a new analysis. Unilateral and economic sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union (EU) lead to a substantial increase in mortality that disproportionately hurts children younger than five years old, the study published in the Lancet Global Health journal found. Sanctions can hobble public health provision and keep humanitarian organisations from operating effectively,…

WASHINGTON – An Afghan who moved to the United States after working for the U.S. military in his home country was seized by armed, masked immigration agents, put in a van and taken out of state, attorneys and members of Congress said on Tuesday. Identified only as Zia by members of Congress and his attorney out of concern for his safety and that of his family, the man had worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military during the war…

HUNTSVILLE, Ontario – With less than a week left for Canada to reach a trade deal with President Donald Trump or face additional tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney on July 22 downplayed the possibility of a breakthrough and suggested that Canada might walk away empty-handed. Mr Carney spoke after an emergency meeting of Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories that he convened in response to Mr Trump’s threat to impose 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian exports starting Aug 1….

WASHINGTON – Columbia University took disciplinary action against dozens of students involved in campus protests as the school negotiates with the Trump administration to restore funding that was cut over accusations of civil-rights violations. Columbia disciplined more than 70 student protesters who occupied a campus library in May, a university spokesperson said on July 22. Of that group, more than 80 per cent were suspended or expelled; others were placed on disciplinary probation and some recent graduates had their degrees…

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is expanding its search for partners to build the Golden Dome missile defence system, courting Amazon’s Project Kuiper and big defence contractors as tensions with billionaire Elon Musk threaten SpaceX’s dominance in the programme, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The shift marks a strategic pivot away from reliance on Mr Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starlink and Starshield satellite networks have become central to US military communications. It comes amid a deteriorating relationship between US…

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump on July 17 threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal after it published a story about an alleged off-colour letter written by him to late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman. The Journal story, which quickly reverberated around the US capital, says the note to Epstein bearing Mr Trump’s signature was part of a collection of notes for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The newspaper says it reviewed…

When a major study appears in JAMA Psychiatry—a high-profile journal that shapes headlines and clinical decisions—its findings carry weight. So when Kalfas and colleagues released what they billed as the most comprehensive analysis of antidepressant withdrawal to date, it drew immediate attention. The study concluded that symptoms were generally “mild,” short-lived, and possibly amplified by nocebo effects—positioning itself as the last word on the subject. The authors mobilised a rapid media campaign to shape the public narrative, with the Science Media Centre issuing…

LONDON – Details of more than 100 British nationals including spies and special forces soldiers were included in one of the country’s worst ever data breaches that led to thousands of Afghans being relocated to the UK, British media reported on July 17. The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which surfaced on Facebook a year later, prompted the relocation of more than 16,000 Afghans to Britain as of May this year amid concerns that they would…

BUCHAREST – Romania’s top court on Thursday struck down a challenge brought by centrist President Nicusor Dan against a bill seeking harsher punishment for antisemitism and hate speech after a divisive election in which the far right gained ground. Parliament updated legislation outlawing the celebration of fascist leaders or imagery in June, introducing prison sentences for the promotion of antisemitism and xenophobia via social media platforms. The bill also increases jail terms for creating or belonging to racist organisations. However,…

By Emmanuel Kwada ‎TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media giant, is under fire again as Austria-based privacy group Noyb (None of Your Business) filed fresh complaints against the company on Thursday, accusing it of violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). ‎The complaints, also targeting AliExpress and WeChat, claim the companies failed to comply with data access requests, obstructing European users’ rights to understand how their personal data is processed. ‎Noyb, a prominent advocate for online privacy, previously filed complaints…

ATHENS – Greek police have arrested five people over the killing of a University of California at Berkeley professor who was shot dead in an Athens suburb earlier in July, police said. The professor’s ex-wife, who has denied any wrongdoing, her Greek partner, and three other people – one Bulgarian and two Albanian nationals – were arrested on Wednesday evening over the incident, a police official said on Thursday. The woman’s partner has confessed to shooting the academic, a 43-year-old…

WASHINGTON – In clearing the way for President Donald Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale. On July 14, for instance, in letting Mr Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling. What the order did not include…