Category: x.straitsTimes

COLORADO SPRINGS – A 23-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty on Monday to killing five people in a 2022 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty in Colorado state court to five first-degree murder counts and 46 attempted murder counts, part of an agreement reached with prosecutors that avoided what could have been a lengthy trial. Aldrich also pleaded no contest to two…

PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday described the shooting dead of a 17-year-old by police during a traffic stop near Paris as “inexcusable”, in rare criticism of law enforcement hours after the incident triggered riots. A police officer is being investigated for voluntary homicide for shooting the youth, who prosecutors say failed to comply with an order to stop his car early on Monday. The interior ministry called for calm after at least 31 were arrested in overnight…

VIRGINIA – The mother of a 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot and wounded his elementary school teacher was charged on Monday with two US firearms felonies, and her lawyer said she will plead guilty to both offences under a deal with federal prosecutors. Deja Taylor was charged with being a user of illegal drugs in possession of a gun and of making a false statement to buy the weapon, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. She is accused of concealing in a…

RICHMOND, Virginia – The mother of a 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot and wounded his elementary school teacher pleaded guilty on Monday to federal gun charges in a deal with prosecutors, according to court documents and her lawyer. Deja Taylor, whose son shot teacher Abby Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News in January, pleaded guilty in federal court to being a user of marijuana while in possession of a firearm. While many states have legalised marijuana, it remains…

HONG KONG – A number of global investors including Warburg Pincus and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are opting out of Ant Group’s proposed share buyback after the Chinese fintech’s valuation was slashed by more than 70 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter. Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Carlyle Group are also among top foreign shareholders that are not participating in the buyback, the people said. A few money managers, including Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe…

SINGAPORE – Cryptocurrency firm Blockchain.com has been granted a licence in its South-east Asian headquarters of Singapore that will allow it to expand its services to global institutional and accredited investors. The company was granted a major payment institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Aug 1. This comes less than a year after Blockchain.com, a pioneer of key infrastructure for the Bitcoin community, received in-principle approval from MAS, which is relatively quicker than the usual time…

SINGAPORE – The manager of Lendlease Global Commercial Reit (Lendlease Reit) posted a distribution per unit (DPU) of 2.25 cents for the second half of financial year 2023 ended June, down 8 per cent from 2.45 cents in the corresponding period a year earlier. Distributable income rose 21.6 per cent to $52.2 million, from $42.9 million a year earlier, while gross revenue climbed 65.1 per cent to $103.1 million over the same period. In a bourse filing on Monday, the…

SINGAPORE – DBS Bank has agreed to sell a 77.8 per cent stake in electronic payment services provider AXS to Tower Capital Asia, a private equity firm based in Singapore. The bank will retain a minority stake of 9.9 per cent in AXS, it said on Tuesday. It did not disclose the stake’s sale price. The deal is slated to close by August, and is not expected to have a material impact on DBS’ earnings or net tangible assets for…

NEW YORK – Standard Chartered is ramping up its bullish Bitcoin prediction, targeting as much as US$120,000 (S$161,000) by the end of 2024 – almost quadruple the current price – as increasingly cash-rich miners reduce their sales of the token. “Increased miner profitability per BTC mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher,” Geoff Kendrick at Standard Chartered wrote on Monday. Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process in which…

TAIPEI/BENGALURU – Taiwan’s Foxconn has withdrawn from a US$19.5 billion (SS26 billion) semiconductor joint venture with Indian metals-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta, it said on Monday, in a setback to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chipmaking plans for India. The world’s largest contract electronics maker signed a pact with Vedanta last year to set up semiconductor and display production plants in Mr Modi’s home state of Gujarat. “Foxconn has determined it will not move forward on the joint venture with Vedanta,” a Foxconn…

BENGALURU – Nearly 900 Amazon workers at a warehouse in Britain will stage a strike for three days in the coming week over a pay dispute, labour union GMB said on Saturday. The strike will take place from July 11-13 at Amazon’s warehouse in Coventry, for two hours during the morning and two hours in the evening on the three days, GMB said in an emailed statement to Reuters. It coincides with a “Prime Day” sales event the company has…

HOUSTON – On the afternoon of July 4, as Americans were celebrating the country’s independence with elaborate fireworks displays, a prisoner named Joseph Martire passed out in his cell in Texas, amid the excessive heat that has been swamping much of the southern United States in recent days. In concrete, brick and metal penitentiaries, industrial fans churn warm vapour without really cooling the air. And with no air-conditioning in most prisons, when outside temperatures exceed 40 deg C, it can…

WASHINGTON – A white powder found inside the White House late on Sunday, which led to the temporary closure of part of the presidential complex, was identified by Washington fire department as cocaine, the Washington Post reported. The Secret Service confirmed to Reuters that an “unknown item” had been found that led to part of the White House being closed, but referred other questions to the fire department, which declined to comment. “On Sunday evening, the White House complex went…

SHANGHAI – China’s major state banks have lowered their US dollar deposit rates for the second time in a month, seven banking sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the authorities step up efforts to arrest a slide in the Renminbi currency. Interest rates offered by the “Big Five” state-owned lenders on most dollar deposits are now capped at 2.8 per cent, down from 4.3 per cent previously, said the people. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which…

LONDON – Kyiv has placed British consumer goods giant Unilever on Ukraine’s “International Sponsors of War” list, claiming Monday it continues to profit from operations in Russia, triggering demonstrations in London. “The National Agency on Corruption Prevention has added British company Unilever onto its list of ‘International Sponsors of War’,” a statement said. This was owing to its “presence in the Russian Federation and its significant taxes to the Russian state budget, thereby supporting the aggressor’s economy and contributing to…

NEW YORK – Former Goldman Sachs banker Brijesh Goel’s trial on insider trading charges drew to a close on Tuesday, with his attorney saying he was framed by his friend and a prosecutor saying Goel had lied to a New York jury. Goel, a former Goldman Sachs vice-president, faces securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly tipping his friend Akshay Niranjan to deals the bank was considering funding in 2017 and 2018. Prosecutors say Goel gleaned the…