Loretto Cunningham has had a rough day at work. A well-meaning colleague inadvertently revealed her sexuality to a senior member of staff at one of the primary schools in Tokyo where she teaches English.
The school was immediately supportive and reassured her that it changed nothing, but Cunningham, 29, who is originally from West Virginia and has lived in Japan for five years, does not like her private life being the potential subject of staff room gossip.
But whatever her own tribulations…
As anti-US feeling grows in Cambodia, China cashes in
Chinese businesses are quietly expanding their footprint in Cambodia as relations between the Southeast Asian nation and Washington worsen and the din of anti-American sentiment grows louder.
The United States and Cambodia have never been on the best of terms, with the small country’s long-time ruler Hun Sen rarely missing an opportunity to take potshots at the Western superpower.
In recent weeks, the prime minister has unleashed a flood of conspiracy theories centred around the US…
Wild elephants kill four Rohingya refugees at Bangladesh camp
Four Rohingya refugees, three of them children, were killed by elephants as they built a shack in a forest in southern Bangladesh on Saturday, police said.
The incident occurred at Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar district, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have set up makeshift shelters since fleeing violence across the border in Myanmar.
“They were trampled to death by seven or eight wild elephants. They include a woman and three children,” said Afrozul Haq Tutul, deputy…
Malaysia planning to shut embassy in North Korea in latest sign of frayed relations
Malaysia plans to “close down” its embassy in Pyongyang, a Foreign Ministry source said on Friday, confirming reports that the ministry has recommended to the cabinet that the country’s embassy in China also be accredited to North Korea.
“Wisma Putra (the Foreign Ministry) will be putting up the recommendation for the cabinet to decide. We will have to wait until the cabinet has made a decision,” an aide to foreign minister Anifah Aman told Kyodo News on condition…
Change in the law needed to liberate data for new pensions dashboard, says industry
The government must change the law to liberate pensions data and enable savers to access all their information in one place online, an industry group has said.
Pension trustees at particular cyber risk: steps to take to protect data
ANALYSIS: Pension scheme trustees can be particularly vulnerable to cyber security attacks, and they can be high profile targets for scammers. There are some steps that they should take to reduce their risk.
In dire straits? Singapore Press Holdings accelerates plan to axe 400 jobs
SINGAPORE PRESS HOLDINGS is hoping that a slimmer employee base will save its struggling media business, but observers say retrenchments alone will not keep Southeast Asia’s biggest newspaper publisher and its regional peers in business, as digital disruption throttles circulation and advertisement revenue. Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), publisher of The Straits Times English daily, announced this week it was urgently bringing forward previously announced plans to slash a tenth…
High Court judge grants malicious falsehood and data protection injunctions over video content
A UK businessman has been barred from repeating false statements he made about a rival company and one of its senior employees, and ordered not to process the personal data of that employee again.
Cambodia bans latest ‘Kingsman’ film for portraying country as a criminal hub
Hollywood’s lighthearted spy blockbuster Kingsman: The Golden Circle has been banned in Cambodia because of a scene that portrays the country and one of its famous temples as a hotbed of crime, an official said on Friday.
The action-comedy sequel follows a fictional British spy organisation that joins forces with an American counterpart to search for a drug lord’s hideout, which turns out to be a jungle-ringed temple in Cambodia. Bok Borak, director of the Culture Ministry’s…
The rumbling Ring of Fire putting parts of Asia in peril
The horseshoe-shaped string of active volcanoes bounding the Pacific Ocean has lived up to its Ring of Fire name in the past month, sparking mass evacuations in Indonesia and Vanuatu and now setting parts of southwestern Japan on edge. The 450 or so volcanoes that make up the Pacific Ring of Fire are an outline of where the massive Pacific Plate is grinding against other plates that form the Earth’s crust, creating a 40,000km-long zone prone to frequent earthquakes and eruptions…