Month: May 2021

Myanmar’s junta-appointed election commission will dissolve Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party (NLD) because of what it said was fraud in a November election, a local news outlet reported on Friday.Myanmar Now said the decision was made during a meeting with political parties that was boycotted by many parties including the NLD.The election fraud conducted by the NLD was illegal “so we will have to dissolve the party’s registration”, the chairman of the junta-backed Union…

A China-backed plan to upgrade an airstrip on Kiribati is fuelling political divisions in the tiny Pacific Island nation, with opposition figures questioning Beijing’s intentions and the project’s purpose.Kiribati’s 33 islands are scattered across resource-rich waters that make up one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones.The proposed revamp of the airstrip, which was used by American bombers during World War II, comes amid heightened scrutiny of Beijing’s outreach efforts to…

The High Court in Ireland has dismissed a legal challenge brought by Facebook over plans outlined by the country’s data protection authority to open an investigation into the company’s arrangements for transferring personal data from the EU to the US.

Financial institutions should evaluate whether the technology, controls and processes they have in place are sufficient to address the risk that their customers fall victim to investment scams run by unregulated businesses, legal experts have warned.

Police in Thailand said on Thursday they were pursuing more suspects in the kidnapping of a Taiwanese businessman in which an American entrepreneur with a criminal past and two other men have been arrested. The case involves a business dispute over the purchase of nitrile gloves – critical personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.Louis William Ziskin, the CEO of a Los Angeles-based tech company, and Jeremy Hughes Manchester, identified as a former US Marine, were arrested…

A heated debate in South Korea about mandatory military service for women is inflaming divisions between the sexes rather than narrowing social gaps, the country’s gender equality minister said.The issue has been the subject of wide discussion since April, when ruling party lawmaker and 2022 presidential hopeful Park Yong-jin reacted to local election defeats by suggesting mandatory military service for women would promote gender equality.Chung Young-ai, who leads the Gender Equality and Family…

Recent decisions by the EU General Court should be seen as confirmation of the core approach taken by the European Commission to tax rulings granted by member states to multinational companies, according to legal experts at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.

Singapore Airlines on Wednesday posted its second-consecutive annual loss, which widened to a record S$4.27 billion (US$3.20 billion), and said it would issue S$6.2 billion of convertible bonds to help weather the coronavirus crisis.The loss for the 12 months ended March 31 was worse than the average S$3.27 billion forecast by eight analysts, according to Refinitiv, and included S$2 billion of impairments largely on the 45 older planes surplus to requirements.It was also far bigger than the S…

Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) has refuted news reports in India claiming of a “Singapore variant” of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, adding that “there is no truth whatsoever in the assertions found within the reports”.“There is no ‘Singapore variant’,” MOH said in a statement late on Tuesday night.The ministry was referring to two reports published on the day.The first was in Hindustan, an English-language daily, with the headline “Coronavirus variant found in Singapore can be…

Mai Le in Boston does not know when her parents will be able to get vaccinated. The Vietnamese Americans went to Vietnam last January to visit family members and have been stuck there since.With Vietnam now struggling with a fourth wave of Covid-19 that has infected more than 1,400 people in the past three weeks – accounting about a quarter of the country’s total tally – she fears they are vulnerable.“I feel terrible. They should be vaccinated, not me. I’m younger, I’m healthier. They are in…