Category: Uncategorized

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is increasingly using its powers to demand information from large businesses without the need to ask for court approval, new data has shown.

Thailand’s junta leader has appointed the scion of a notorious political clan to run the country’s money-spinning “Sin City” of Pattaya, as he woos allies ahead of an anticipated run in next year’s elections.
With its beaches, myriad hotels and raucous nightlife, Pattaya is a lucrative tourist hub and the heart of Thailand’s massive sex industry.
Prayuth Chan-ocha, who leads the ruling junta, booted out the current mayor of the freewheeling resort and…

EU member states lost nearly €150 billion (£134bn) in VAT revenue in 2016, according to new research published by the European Commission.

A Philippine lawmaker fiercely critical of President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war was arrested on Tuesday on previously dismissed charges, a move condemned by watchdogs as persecution of the government’s opponents.
Senator Antonio Trillanes was taken into custody and then posted bail shortly after a court-issued warrant forced him from the Senate building, where he has holed up for weeks to avoid arrest.
Trillanes is the second senator critical of Duterte’s drug war to be…

One of Singapore’s most influential diplomats called Tuesday for the repeal of a law criminalising sex between men, saying it was time for the modern city state to abandon the “antiquated” legislation.
The Indian Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month to decriminalise homosexual sex has sparked fresh debate in Singapore, and a new legal challenge has been lodged against the city’s anti-gay sex law.
Sex between men remains illegal in Singapore under “…

More than a decade ago, Darii Garam, 76, moved to Ulan Bator with her children so they could go to school and find work beyond herding animals in the countryside. Now, the pollution, set to worsen in the approaching winter, is getting to her.
“Even just going outside for a second, opening your door, your home fills with smoke, your clothes, everything smells like it,” she says moving around her ger, a spacious and neatly kept traditional Mongolian yurt, to make tea.
Darii lives on…

Foreign companies with a presence in Turkey have been advised to renegotiate the price of their contracts with local organisations into the Turkish Lira as soon as possible.

Myanmar’s powerful army chief said the United Nations had no right to interfere in the sovereignty of his country, a week after UN investigators called for him and other top generals to be prosecuted for “genocide” against the Rohingya.
The defiant response is the army chief’s first public reaction since a UN fact-finding mission urged the Security Council to refer Myanmar’s top military brass to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Min Aung Hlaing also shrugged…

The Australian strawberry scare has spread to New Zealand with a supermarket chain announcing on Sunday that needles were found in a box of the fruit sourced from the neighbouring country.
The Countdown supermarket chain said it had taken a brand of Australian strawberries off the shelves after a sabotaged punnet – a plastic box – was sold in an Auckland store.
The strawberries, from Western Australia state, were sold in Countdown stores nationwide last week and only one incident of…

Campaigning for Indonesia’s presidential election officially began Sunday with the two contenders releasing white doves and vowing a peaceful race as concerns simmer the campaign will sharpen religious and ethnic divides.
The election due in April pits incumbent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo against former general and ultranationalist Prabowo Subianto, who lost to Widodo in 2014.
Dressed in traditional clothing, the candidates and their running mates paraded through central Jakarta on…