World

WASHINGTON: The United States will share technologies used to make COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization (WHO) and is working to expand rapid testing and antiviral treatments for hard-to-reach populations, President Joe Biden said on Thursday (May 12). The US will contribute an additional US$200 million to a global health fund for future pandemic preparedness at the World Bank, he said, bringing its total contribution to $450 million. "We are making available health technologies that are owned by the United States government, including stabilised spike protein that is used in many COVID-19 vaccines," Biden said in his opening speech for the second global COVID-19 summit. The summit, jointly hosted by the United States, Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal, is being h...

If the Supreme Court chooses to repeal Roe v. Wade — effectively removing nearly 50 years of federal protections for abortion — it could be catastrophic for the economy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned on Tuesday. Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey asked Yellen what the economic consequences of overturning the ruling would be during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, NBC reports. "I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades," Yellen, who is the first woman to lead the Treasury, said. Yellen added that research has shown how having access to abortion has allowed women to plan "fulfilling and satisfying" lives, in addition to impro...

Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland on May 25th, 2022. "Friend-shoring" refers to working with countries that possess a "strong adherence to a set of norms and values about how to operate in the global economy and how to run the global economic system," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outlined in a speech in April. "It is a huge national security issue and we need to move to making chips in America, not friend-shoring," Raimondo told CNBC exclusively at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. While the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) for America Act was passed in January 2021, Congress has yet to agree on a bill that would appropriate resources for its various programs, despite bipartisan support for ...

Select’s editorial team works independently to review financial products and write articles we think our readers will find useful. We earn a commission from affiliate partners on many offers, but not all offers on Select are from affiliate partners. Using your rate of return, the Rule of 72 is a simplified formula that measures the effect of compound interest on your investment dollars. As a refresher, compound interest is calculated on your principal amount, plus your accumulated interest. It essentially pays interest on top of interest and is a huge perk of investing in the market since your interest earned is automatically reinvested, earning you even more. Luckily, there's a mathematical shortcut to help you estimate the future value of an investment. The Rule of 72 is a quick way to...

Some businesses use overseas call centres, many of which are located in India and the Philippines, because the labour costs in these countries are much lower. Forum threads discussing +65 calls said they could also be from legitimate companies that use cloud-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular phone line. VoIP calls are cost-effective and can intentionally spoof a +65 number to make them appear more legitimate locally. Mr Kevin Reed, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Acronis, said VoIP calls work using “from” and “to” entries. “They resemble ‘from’ and ‘to’ on plain old letters – sender can write almost anything there and receiver may not even check the ‘from’ part becau...

WASHINGTON: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating 109 childhood cases of a mysterious form of hepatitis, including five reported deaths, the agency said Friday (May 6). It is part of an unexplained global phenomenon involving hundreds of cases, with Indonesia this week also reporting three deaths. Britain on Friday announced its case count had increased to 163, the majority aged under five, with no deaths. "Investigators both here ... and around the globe are working hard to determine the cause," said Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases for the CDC. Health authorities think the cases might be linked to a wave of type of virus called adenovirus, but are trying to confirm the theory. Ninety percent of the US cases have involved hospitalizatio...

According to a new survey by Cisco, 75% of respondents said they save money on food and entertainment through hybrid work schedules. D3sign | Moment | Getty Images Hybrid work arrangements are popular these days for many reasons — and one of them is that they can save workers thousands each year. A new survey by the tech conglomerate Cisco — which was conducted this year among more than 6,000 respondents from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines — showed that 86% of workers saved money by working partly from home in the past year. Average savings reached more than $7,500 a year, with 85% of respondents saying they believe they can maintain these savings over the long term through hybrid work schedules. This may be why "only 5% said that they wanted to go back ...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and legendary investor Warren Buffett might disagree about the long-term value of cryptocurrencies, but they seem to share the same principles when it comes to investing in the stock market. Musk, the richest person on Earth according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, offered some investing advice in a tweet Sunday: "Since I've been asked a lot: Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that you believe in. Only sell if you think their products and services are trending worse. Don't panic when the market does." The tweet echoes the principles of value investing made famous by Buffett, currently the sixth richest person in the world. With value investing, you only buy the stocks of companies that have a business model that you believe in and und...

SINGAPORE: A man was on Friday (May 27) sentenced to two years and four months' jail for having sex with a teenage girl he met in a Japanese street style group. The man, now in his 30s, started having sex with the girl when she was under the age of 16. Both of their identities are protected by gag order. He pleaded guilty to three counts of having sex with a minor. Another four charges were considered for sentencing. The duo met in 2018, when the victim joined a local group that embraces "Harajuku culture", referring to a street style popular in Japan. The offender was then already part of the group, whose members regularly met up in town dressed in Harajuku style and lunched together. "The victim also attended several of these lunches on weekdays with the accused and began to develop...

You may not be ready to jump into the metaverse for fun, but it could be coming to work sooner than you think. Microsoft announced Tuesday that Kawasaki is a new customer for the tech giant's so-called "industrial metaverse" ⁠— a fancy way of saying factory floor workers will wear a HoloLens headset to help with production, repairs and managing supply chains. It will use the headsets to help build robots. HoloLens, first launched in 2016, lets the wearer experience augmented reality, which overlays digital imagery in a real world environment. For Microsoft's industrial metaverse, that means stitching together many of the company's technologies like cloud computing to help factory workers and managers build products faster and more efficiently. The idea is to create what Microsoft calls ...