A reduction in the banking surcharge and an extension of the increased annual investment allowance were two of the headline corporate tax changes announced by the UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, in his autumn budget speech.
Indonesia frees US woman jailed in Bali for assisting in ‘suitcase murder’ of her mother
An American woman convicted of helping to kill her mother on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali in 2014 walked free from prison on Friday after serving seven years of a 10-year sentence and will be deported to the United States.The badly beaten body of a wealthy Chicago socialite, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, was found inside the boot of a taxi parked at the upscale St Regis Bali Resort in August 2014.Heather Mack, who was almost 19 and a few weeks pregnant at the time, and her then-21-year-old…
Son of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan granted bail, as supporters allege religious persecution
The son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan was on Thursday granted bail, three weeks after being arrested during a cruise ship drugs bust in a case that has gripped India.Aryan Khan, 23, the eldest son of the actor dubbed the “King of Bollywood”, was detained in early October alongside 19 others after the Narcotics Control Bureau raided a ship set to sail from Mumbai to Goa.He was given bail on Thursday along with two others by the High Court of Bombay on their fourth attempt.Son of…
Asean upgrades strategic ties with China, says Myanmar an ‘integral’ member
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) bloc on Thursday said it had agreed with China to upgrade their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, a day after reaching a similar deal with Australia.Australia’s clinching of the elevated partnership was a symbolic win for Canberra in getting ahead of Beijing in securing the first such deal with the Southeast Asia region, which has become a strategic battleground between China and the US.The announcement was made by Brunei’s…
Autumn budget 2021: R&D tax relief changes ‘could hit UK life sciences’
New territoriality restrictions on the availability of research and development (R&D) tax reliefs may have unintended negative consequences for the life sciences sector, a tax expert has said.
Death of two Americans by melioidosis – the ‘Vietnamese time bomb’ disease – linked to Indian aromatherapy spray sold in Walmart
Two Americans died and two became seriously ill from an obscure disease known as the ‘Vietnamese time bomb’ after being infected with a bacterium linked to an India-manufactured aromatherapy spray sold in Walmart. The first infections of burkholderia pseudomallei were detected on August 9 by a laboratory of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in America. Technicians found it in the aromatherapy spray used in the home of a person in Georgia who became ill in July and later…
Singapore sees place for cryptocurrencies such as Stablecoins, minister says
Cryptocurrencies have a place in Singapore’s financial sector if these digital assets are regulated, according to the chairman of the nation’s central bank.“There may be a role for crypto in future finance that extends beyond pure speculation and illicit finance,” Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said on Wednesday at the Asia Financial Markets Forum.Stablecoins, for example, can have a role together with traditional payment systems, though these…
Australian local governments to sign renewable energy PPAs
Local governments in Western Australia are set to sign up to an agreement to purchase power from renewable sources under a reportedly ‘Australian first’ renewables and carbon offset aggregation project.
Sukmawati, daughter of Indonesia’s Sukarno gives up Islam, embraces Hinduism in conversion ‘with no obstacles’
The daughter of Indonesia’s founding president Sukarno on Tuesday gave up Islam and embraced Hinduism, in a move that human rights and political observers held up as evidence of religious pluralism in the world’s most populous Muslim country.Some went a step further to say that Sukmawati Sukarnoputri’s religious conversion – which would be considered blasphemous in other Muslim-majority nations including Malaysia – could be interpreted as her opposition to the growth in political Islam in…
In the Philippines, survivors of most powerful typhoon of 2020 still live in fear
A year after a powerful storm sent an avalanche of volcanic rock and sand crashing down, burying her house, Filipino food vendor Florivic Baldoza still lives in an evacuation centre. As global warming brings increasingly extreme weather, she now fears “nowhere is safe”. Hundreds of families from poor villages around Mayon volcano in Albay province on the Philippines’ most populous island of Luzon are waiting for new homes after Typhoon Goni pounded the region last November. “That’s the…