Month: January 2021

Police in Japan are calling on the Chinese community to beware of a new spike in telephone fraud cases targeting Chinese nationals. Authorities in the Kanto region, which encompasses Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures, are investigating automated calls in perfect Mandarin Chinese from people who claim to be from the Chinese embassy in Tokyo. The recipients of the calls are instructed to call another phone number for further instructions. In these subsequent conversations, the recipients…

The 5.7 million citizens and long-term residents of Singapore eligible for a free Covid-19 vaccination will not be able to choose which shot they take, as this would “unnecessarily complicate the already complex vaccination programme”, the country’s health minister said on Monday.Instead, authorities would allocate the vaccines based on what was available, and what was assessed to be suitable for recipients, based on their medical history and other factors, Minister Gan Kim Yong said.“Anyway,…

Australia’s most-populous state of New South Wales reported eight new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, while neighbouring Victoria’s tally increased by three, as new measures to combat the disease kicked in.The NSW outbreak started around mid-December in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area, where a quarter of a million people are in strict lockdown until January 9. Cases associated with the cluster now total 148.A smaller cluster in the west of the city, linked to a different genome sequence, has 13…

Entrepreneur Huihan Lie, 42, grew up in the Dutch provinces of Gelderland and Groningen and found it “just strange” when he realised he was the only student of Chinese descent in his class who spoke fluent Dutch and had an Indonesian background – compared with some other students at his school or in his village who had migrated from mainland China and had parents speaking Mandarin or other Chinese languages at home with them. His Surabaya-born father and Jakarta-born mother had migrated to the…

India’s market regulator ordered billionaire Mukesh Ambani and his conglomerate Reliance Industries to pay a combined penalty of 400 million rupees (US$5.5 million) for allegedly violating share-trading rules about 13 years ago.In its order dated January 1, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said Reliance and its agents operated to allegedly earn undue profits from the sale of shares in Reliance Petroleum, a former unit, in both the cash and futures markets. Reliance Industries…

Pandemic-related travel restrictions have plunged Thailand’s tourism industry into crisis – but the doom and gloom has not stopped new hotel openings in Bangkok, particularly at the high end of the market.There were at least a dozen high-profile hotel openings in 2020, with one recently rebranded property offering club rooms for as little as 1,222 baht (US$40) the week before Christmas. Others like Capella Bangkok – which opened in October and has the highest rack rates in the capital, starting…

With coronavirus infections persisting in Japan, Frenchman Eric Fior, who owns a language school in Yokohama, decided several months ago to scrap all plans for a year-end overseas holiday. “It became quite clear even in the spring that this thing was not going to be over in a couple of months and so I took a summer holiday here in Japan and I’m just spending time with my family over Christmas and New Year,” he said. While he and other foreign nationals holding work permits in Japan have…

India will test its Covid-19 vaccine delivery system with a nationwide trial on Saturday as the South Asian nation prepares to roll-out an inoculation programme to stem the world’s second-worst outbreak.The federal health ministry has reviewed preparedness and asked state governments to ensure the effectiveness of the programme, the government said in a statement Thursday.Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a speech on Thursday the country was preparing to give indigenously manufactured shots…