World

:A federal judge said on Wednesday Tesla Inc was liable to a Black elevator operator who said the electric car company ignored racial abuse at the factory where he worked, but reduced a nearly $137 million jury award to $15 million. U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco ruled after jurors last October found that Tesla subjected Owen Diaz to a hostile environment at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California by allowing and failing to stop the racism he faced. Diaz, who worked at the plant for nine months in 2015 and 2016, said other employees used racist slurs when speaking to him, and scrawled swastikas and slurs including the "N-word" on bathroom walls. He also said one supervisor drew a racist caricature near his workstation. In a 43-page decision, Orrick said the evidence ...

How high prices at the pump can go is hard to say, particularly in the peak summer driving season between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Analysts say that will depend on oil prices, which have been fluctuating as the world scrambles to replace Russian oil exports. Gasoline prices have fallen from a record $4.33 nationally per gallon of unleaded on March 11. Prices of gasoline declined as oil prices dipped, but crude has moved higher again and analysts say gasoline prices could too. Legislation has been proposed by Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House to temporarily lift an 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax. Those proposals have been referred to committees. Maryland last week suspended its 36 cents per gallon gasoline tax, and its average price for unleaded at the pump is now ...

Japan will raise its daily limit on arrivals from overseas to around 10,000 from April 10, up from the current 7,000, the top government spokesman said Friday, as the country gradually relaxes its coronavirus border controls. The easing of the nation’s strict border controls is in response to growing demand for entry among returning Japanese nationals, foreign residents and new nontourist arrivals, including foreign students, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said. Foreign tourists are still barred from entry. “Japan plans to increase international movements of people in stages by taking into account the infection situation at home and abroad and border control measures that other major nations have taken,” Matsuno said at a news conference. Japan effectively imposed an entry ban...

SINGAPORE: Singapore has reached “a major milestone” in the fight against COVID-19, with the country now able to “breathe easier”, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung on Friday (Apr 22). With COVID-19 infection rates stabilising, Mr Ong added that the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level will be brought down from Orange to Yellow from Apr 26. The DORSCON framework, which gives an indication of the current disease situation, was raised to Orange more than two years ago. This move will be accompanied by the further easing of a number of measures across the community. Here's what you need to know: 1. No more limits on group sizes From Apr 26, there will no longer be a cap on group sizes. This means you will no longer need to keep to groups of 10 people for mask-off ac...

SINGAPORE: Taxi company ComfortDelGro is relaunching its mobile application under a new name on Wednesday (Apr 20), also introducing new services and making it easier for customers to access services through a single platform. The application, renamed CDG Zig, combines the ComfortDelGro taxi booking application and its now-decommissioned lifestyle application Zig, the company said in a news release on Tuesday. It will be available for download on the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store and the Huawei AppGallery. “It will offer users taxi and ride-railing booking features and lifestyle options like restaurant reservation, as well as new services like electric vehicle (EV) charging,” it said. “Over time, it will continue to grow with the addition of more ComfortDelGro services from its...

Climate change is near a tipping point – and time is running out. Last August, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that by the next decade, global surface temperatures will rise beyond the 2015 Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold target, unless urgent action is taken. The same report estimates that approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change. Already, the world is seeing an increase in the number of extreme weather events driven by climate change, such as flooding, forest fires and droughts. According to a study of 1,500 companies in the MSCI World Index, without any concrete action to curb emissions, the international private sector would be responsible for raising global temperatures...

Educator Noriko Hazeki says the challenges non-Japanese children face in the Japanese school system begin even before they enroll. She says some parents have been told that it will “be hard for your child because their Japanese isn’t good,” and that, actually, “they don’t have to go to school, so why push them?” “Compulsory education in Japan is really only compulsory if your citizenship is Japanese,” she explains. “Otherwise, it’s up to the parents whether they want to put their children in school or not, and some schools even discourage them from doing so.” The picture that often comes to mind when imagining non-Japanese children going to school in Japan is often one of a multicultural student body attending elite, expensive international schools in the heart of Tokyo. As the number o...

As soon as rumors started buzzing that soccer star Lionel Messi would transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in August, Miguel Schweizer decided to buy the French club’s fan token, $PSG, on a hunch that prices would spike. They did — but he didn’t hold the tokens for long. He sold them a few days later, betting the rally would be short-lived. His trade proved correct: prices were down 34% a week later, and 73% from when the tokens were issued after four months. “I would never keep them in my investment portfolio for the long term,” said Schweizer, 29, chief executive officer of Decrypto, a Buenos-Aires based exchange and wallet. “They’re trade opportunities.” For many hopeful fans, soccer club tokens have proved a disappointment, with prices quickly losing steam within days. It’...

According to the Office for National Statistics, 4.9 million people in Britain, or 1 in 13, were infected with Covid-19 as of March 26 — a record high since its survey began in April 2020. Bloomberg | Getty Images LONDON — A new omicron subvariant has been detected in the U.K. as the country faces a renewed surge in Covid-19 hospitalizations. The XE variant, as it is known, has so far been detected in 637 patients nationwide, according to the latest statistics from the U.K. Health Security Agency, which said there is currently not enough evidence to draw conclusions on its transmissibility or severity. XE contains a mix of the previously highly infectious omicron BA.1 strain, which emerged in late 2021, and the newer "stealth" BA.2 variant, currently the U.K.'s dominant variant. It is wh...

Oil prices tumbled 5% in volatile trading on Tuesday on demand concerns after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reduced its economic growth forecasts and warned of higher inflation. Prices fell despite lower output from OPEC+, which produced 1.45 million barrels per day (bpd) below its targets in March, as Russian output began to decline following sanctions imposed by the West, according to a report from the producer alliance seen by Reuters. Russia produced about 300,000 bpd below its target in March at 10.018 million bpd, based on secondary sources, the report showed. Brent crude declined 5.22% to $107.25, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled 5.2% lower at $102.56 per barrel. The IMF cut its forecast for global economic growth by nearly a full percentage point, citing...