Financial firms should consider requiring customers to provide proof of identity from documentation containing “high security features or biometric data”, such as passports, to ensure that digital-only ‘on boarding’ processes comply with anti-money laundering rules, EU regulators have said.
‘Spattered with blood and shaking with fear’: the Indonesian market where dogs are butchered and blowtorched
Disturbing video footage of dogs being butchered and their hair burnt off with blowtorches at markets in Indonesia has prompted howls of protest from animal rights activists.
Campaigners from the Dog Meat-Free Indonesia group are urging authorities to shut down the country’s live animal markets, where they say thousands of dogs and cats are bludgeoned to death each week.
Video filmed by the activists at markets in Tomohon and Langowan cities on Sulawesi island shows a stomach-churning…
Kim Jong-un, lacking good information, moves ‘ever closer’ to putting US at risk of nuclear attack: CIA director
The US believes North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is not getting good information to handle the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear missile programme and the country is moving “ever closer” to putting Americans at risk of attack, according to CIA director Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo said on Tuesday that he believes Kim will not rest until he is able to threaten multiple nuclear attacks against the US at the same time.
He cast doubt on whether Kim is well-briefed enough on developments to…
US may upset Beijing after it backs Indonesian claim on South China Sea near Natuna islands
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis accepted Indonesia renaming an area previously considered part of the South China Sea during his visit to the country – potentially upsetting China.
“Certainly Indonesia, as a fulcrum, a maritime fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific area, is critical,” Mattis told a joint press conference after bilateral talks with Indonesian defence minister Ryamizard Ryacudu.
He also expressed a readiness to embrace the name newly assigned by Indonesia to waters around…
Bonds with euro clause are qualifying corporate bonds, says Court of Appeal
A clause in sterling denominated loan notes which applied if the UK joined the euro did not prevent those loan notes from being qualifying corporate bonds (QCBs) for the purposes of UK capital gains tax (CGT), the Court of Appeal has decided, reversing a decision of the Upper Tribunal.
Tokyo digs out from heavy snow, but travel chaos remains, with thousands stuck at airport
The Japanese capital of Tokyo on Tuesday dug out from more than 20cm of snow that had snarled traffic, trapping cars on bridges and in tunnels, and serious transport delays remained around the metropolis.
The snow that began on Monday morning tapered off early on Tuesday after dumping some 23cm on a city that rarely has snow accumulate, with freezing temperatures keeping snow-choked roads slick and pedestrians wary. It was the heaviest snow to hit Tokyo in four years.
Most commuter lines were…
US seeks closer ties with Vietnam to counter China’s growth, 50 years on from vital Viet Cong victory
A half-century after the Tet offensive punctured American hopes of victory in Vietnam, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is visiting the former enemy in search of a different kind of win: incremental progress as partners in a part of the world the Pentagon has identified as vital for the United States to compete with China and Russia.
Mattis, a retired general who entered the Marine Corps during Vietnam but did not serve there, on Monday arrived in Indonesia, where he’ll spend two days before…
Funding announced for new drugs manufacturing centres in the UK
New centres for manufacturing medicines are to receive £70 million of funding from the UK government.
How a rising tourism tide lifts all boats in Vietnam
As Vietnam prepares to welcome up to 17 million international tourists this year, a 30 per cent increase on last year’s record, even those in the nation’s most impoverished regions are ready to reap the benefits.
Among them is Zu, a Black Hmong woman from the tiny village of Ta Van in northwest Vietnam, who walks the rice terraces of her neighbourhood for almost six hours every day.
She married at 16 and had her first child soon after. Now 24 and a mother of two, Zu takes tourists…
100 feared dead from measles, malnutrition in Indonesia’s Papua
A measles outbreak is feared to have killed about 100 malnourished people in Indonesia’s Papua, an official said on Sunday, highlighting a health crisis in the country’s easternmost province.
A total of 69 toddlers have died in the remote Asmat region, said Papua military spokesman Muhammad Aidi, while reports on the ground suggest 27 people have died in an equally remote and mountainous district named Oksibil. “We have received reports from villagers that the outbreak is…