Tag: All Regions

US, European lawmakers want oil boss removed as COP28 head

WASHINGTON – More than 100 members of the US Congress and the European Parliament on Tuesday called for the removal of an oil industry executive tapped to lead the next United Nations climate change conference. The choice of Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), to head December’s COP28 summit in Dubai has angered activists who fear it will hold back progress on reducing emissions. The lawmakers expressed “profound concern” over the appointment in…

Ex-‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli now living in Queens on $3,366 a month

NEW YORK – Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical chief executive officer who served almost seven years in prison for securities fraud, is earning US$2,500 (S$3,370) a month consulting for a law firm and living with his sister in Queens, New York, according to the US Probation Office. Shkreli, 40, has had a mostly “positive adjustment” since being released from prison in 2022 and is currently employed by the Law Office of Christopher K. Johnston, according to a probation report filed…

Mexico: Public Accountability, Privacy Under Threat

(Washington, DC) – President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and legislators from his party have effectively paralyzed the country’s independent transparency and data protection agency by blocking nominations to fill vacant seats on its board, Human Rights Watch said today. The Senate should move swiftly to fill the three vacant seats. The National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information, and Data Protection (INAI) is the independent agency charged with enforcing transparency and data protection rules in Mexico. It has played an…

EU: Flawed Reliance on Audits for Raw Materials Rules

(Brussels) – European governments risk relying too much on voluntary audit and certification initiatives to protect rights in European Union minerals supply chains, Human Rights Watch said in a question-and-answer document released today. EU laws, including the draft Critical Raw Minerals Act released in March 2023, need to recognize that compliance with voluntary standards is no substitute for rigorous regulatory scrutiny and enforcement. Audit and certifications initiatives purport to assess and certify companies’ respect for human rights and the environment…

Apple says it has struck a multi-billion dollar deal with chipmaker Broadcom to use more US-made parts

Under the multi-year agreement, the two US companies will develop components for 5G devices that will be designed and manufactured in America. Apple says the deal is part of a plan it announced in 2021 to invest $430bn (£346bn) in the US economy. The move comes as a trade row centred on the technology industry intensifies between Washington and Beijing. The long-running dispute has seen the US impose a series of measures against China’s chip making industry and invest billions…

Public Housing Contractors Are Using Federal Money To Inflict Biometric Surveillance Misery On Their Tenants

Most of us wouldn’t argue that private companies can’t run their businesses the way they prefer. The gold standard has been the right to refuse service to anyone — something that covers everything from refusing paper checks from certain customers to booting people off social media services for refusing to stop behaving like inveterate assholes. When private companies do things, they rarely mess with constitutional protections. There are guardrails in place to prevent discrimination against minorities and other historically oppressed…

Financial institutions in Singapore required to combat higher money laundering risks from wealthy clients: MAS

SINGAPORE – Financial institutions are required to alert the police and the financial regulator if they suspect that a transaction could be related to a crime, although there is no threshold set for when they must flag these activities. They are also required to step up their measures to manage the higher risks of money laundering and terrorism financing posed by customers such as wealthy individuals, said a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) spokesman on Tuesday. MAS said financial institutions…

US Military Confirms Airstrike Against Al-Shabab in Somalia

By Harun Maruf  The United States military has confirmed conducting a new airstrike against al-Shabab militants in the Middle Juba region of southern Somalia. The airstrike took place in Jilib town on Saturday in collaboration with the Somali federal government, according to a press statement released Monday by the U.S. Africa Command known as AFRICOM. “The command’s initial assessment is that no civilians were injured or killed,” the statement said. The AFRICOM statement did not say whether any of the…

Credit Suisse AT1 bonds: Swiss court receives 230 claims against Swiss regulator

ZURICH – Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court has received 230 claims against the country’s financial regulator Finma after it wrote off the value of Credit Suisse’s AT1 bonds, the court said on Tuesday. The claims related to 2,500 individual parties, a court spokesman told Reuters. The court in the north-eastern Swiss city of St Gallen, declined to say whether the time limit for filing further claims had expired or the amount of compensation claimed. The bond holders have sued Finma after…

Go First Grounded: Decade Sees 11th Private Airline Exit Indian Skies

A wave of uncertainty swept across India’s already unstable aviation sector as Go First, a once thriving private airline owned by the Wadia Group, announced a halt to its operations, making it the 11th airline to cease its services in the last decade. The budget airline opted for voluntary insolvency resolution proceedings before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), delivering a significant jolt to the industry. The primary reason for this drastic move lies in the alleged failure of US-based…

Wells Fargo to Pay $1 Billion to Settle Pension-Led Lawsuit

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a pension fund-led lawsuit that accused the bank of defrauding shareholders by misleading them over the progress it was making to rectify a slew of scandals. The Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi, the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Pension & Relief Fund and the state of Rhode Island were among the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in June 2020 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The…

First Citizens sues HSBC for hiring away Silicon Valley Bank staff

First Citizens BancShares Inc, which acquired Silicon Valley Bank following its collapse, sued HSBC Holdings PLC on Monday, accusing it of poaching more than 40 of the failed bank’s employees in order to launch its own U.S. venture banking business. The lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court says HSBC violated federal law by hiring away the workers so it could gain access to Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) trade secrets including information about clients in the tech and healthcare sectors….

Jeffrey Epstein Emails Indicate Attempt to Blackmail Bill Gates Over Affair

Epstein’s old emails and calendar contain plenty of information to raise eyebrows about some of the most wealthy and well-known socialites. One of the biggest names in Epstein’s rolodex is the prolific philanthropist and megabillionaire Bill Gates. No longer just known for his computer programming savvy and lectures on greenhouse gases, Mr. Gates’ personal acquaintances are starting to peek through thanks to the investigative work of the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal reported that Jeffrey Epstein allegedly had…

Meta fined record $1.75 billion for violating EU data privacy rules

LONDON – Meta on Monday was fined a record 1.2 billion euros (S$1.75 billion) and ordered to stop transferring data collected from Facebook users in Europe to the United States, in a major ruling against the social media giant for violating European Union (EU) data protection rules. The penalty, which eclipses a 746 million euro EU fine previously doled out to Amazon.com, was announced by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. It is potentially one of the most consequential in the five…

U.S. Air Force wants to avoid F-35 mistakes on sixth-gen fighter

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is focused on avoiding the mistakes that plagued past programs like the F-35, as the service officially kicks off its effort to build a sixth-generation fighter, Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday. That includes ensuring the Air Force has access to all the sustainment data it needs from the contractor building the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, Kendall told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Defense Writers Group. “We’re not going to repeat the,…

Florida sued over new law blocking Chinese citizens, other foreigners from buying property

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A group of Chinese citizens living and working in Florida sued the state Monday over a new law that bans Chinese nationals from purchasing property in large swaths of the state. The law applies to land near military installations and other “critical infrastructure” and also affects citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. But Chinese citizens face the harshest restrictions. The law “will codify and expand housing discrimination against people of Asian descent…