Month: September 2018

Pension compensation payable to employees of insolvent businesses by the UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF) cannot be capped at less than 50% of what the individual would have otherwise been entitled to, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled.

Japan’s “Twitter killer”, suspected of murdering and chopping up people he lured on social media, and storing their body parts in coolboxes, was charged Monday with nine counts of murder.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, has admitted to killing and butchering all nine of his victims – all but one of whom were women aged between 15 and 26.
Yoga ball murder trial: putting deadly gas in ball was ‘a crazy thing to do’
On the morning of Halloween last year, police…

A Singaporean court has ordered the return of S$15.3 million (US$11.1 million) linked to the indebted 1MDB Malaysian state investment fund.
Law firm Tan Rajah & Cheah said on Monday that the misappropriated funds were being transferred to a special 1MDB recovery bank account in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
It did not say how many individuals were involved.
The Malaysians hiding their Hermes and the ones flashing the cash
“Efforts to recover other unlawfully misappropriated…

Pro and anti-whaling nations are set for a showdown when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meets in Brazil from Monday as Japan leads an assault on a three-decade old moratorium on commercial whale hunting.
Tokyo heads into the biennial meeting as chair of the 88-nation body determined to shake-up what it says is a dysfunctional organisation mired in dispute and unable to make key decisions.
But Japan’s package of proposals, entitled “The Way Forward” left…

In a hut on the top of a fog-licked mountain in northern Laos, Vo Pali is getting high.
His poison is opium, a sap extracted from poppies grown illegally by the poor hill tribes in the Communist state’s rugged, inaccessible uplands.
“I smoke three times a day,” the 60-year-old ethnic Hmong villager says in a barely audible rasp of his 30-year habit.
“It has damaged my life. I have no income. But I get sick without it.”
The talk tails off as he loads up his first…

Time was running out on Saturday for survivors of a magnitude 6.7 earthquake that rocked Japan’s Hokkaido island, triggering landslides that tore deep brown scars in hillsides. Meanwhile, officials said the death toll from the quake had risen to 30 – most of them in one small community. About 40,000 personnel including members of the Self-Defence Forces, police and firefighters intensified operations as the first 72 hours after a quake are considered crucial for finding survivors…

Thai fishermen and labourers whose livelihoods are threatened by rising sea levels kicked off an international day of protests in Bangkok Saturday, where key UN talks are attempting to breathe life into the Paris Agreement on climate change.
As global warming races ahead of efforts to contain it, the discussions are deadlocked over a number of contentious issues, with activists demanding immediate action to prevent irreparable damage to the planet.
The “Rise for Climate” protest…

New cybersecurity laws have taken effect in Singapore – the first of their kind in the city state.

New rules to better protect EU citizens against non-cash payment fraud, including tougher penalties for fraudsters, have been backed by a committee of the European parliament.

Pentecostal leaders have warned their congregation that “darkness” will spread across Australia and Christians will be persecuted if Scott Morrison does not win the next election.
Others have been told that Morrison’s rise to power was a “miracle of God” that answered three days of prayer and fasting. They have been told that Morrison has made a public stand for Christian freedoms, and has promised to keep doing so, so God intervened to ensure he beat the home…