World

Taiwan is nervous that Beijing may take advantage of a distracted West to ramp up pressure on the island amid the crisis in Ukraine, but there have been no unusual maneuvers by Chinese forces in recent days, officials in Taipei say. The government, always on alert to what they view as Chinese provocations, last month set up a Ukraine working group under the National Security Council. China views Taiwan as its own territory and has stepped up military activity near the self-governing island during the past two years. President Tsai Ing-wen told a meeting of the working group on Wednesday that Taiwan must increase its surveillance and alertness on military activities in the region and tackle foreign misinformation, though she did not directly mention China. Although Taiwan’s government sa...

Valuations of Asian equities touched a 23-month low at the end of February, as geopolitical uncertainty surrounding Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the prospect of policy tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve this year weighed on stock markets. The cheaper valuations, however, cushion regional stock prices amid a turmoil in global equity markets, analysts said. The MSCI Asia-Pacific index's forward 12-month P/E ratio stood at 13.12 at end-February, the lowest since the onset of the pandemic, against the MSCI World index's P/E of 16.49, Refinitiv data showed. Graphic: MSCI Asia-Pacific and World index's PE: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/akpezxowdvr/MSCIper cent20Asia-Pacificper cent20andper cent20Worldper cent20index'sper cent20PE.jpg "That (low valuations) provides some s...

SINGAPORE: A flight attendant was sentenced on Monday (Mar 7) to five weeks' jail for molesting a female colleague during a flight from Singapore to the Philippines in 2019. The 50-year-old man was convicted in January of outraging the modesty of a flight stewardess. He slapped her buttock on May 3, 2019, when walking past her on the plane and when she was attending to a passenger. Details of the airline and names of involved parties were redacted from court documents, and a gag order is in place to protect the identity of the victim. During the trial, the accused denied touching or slapping the victim's buttock, claiming to have only "tapped" the victim's "right side of the pelvic" when he saw that she was leaning against the seat, and that her buttocks were "protruding" into the aisle...

On Saturday afternoon, the prime minister gave a speech at a programme to commemorate the “Malaysian Family Aspirations Tour”, an event for government agencies to engage and resolve issues at the state level across the country. The event on Saturday was the first time the programme was held outside of Kuala Lumpur. GOVERNMENT HAS HELPED JOHOREANS IMPACTED BY COVID-19, FLOODS In his speech, Mr Ismail Sabri outlined several initiatives which the federal government has put in place for Johoreans. He stressed that the federal government’s efforts to implement the land and air vaccinated travel lane (VTL) scheme with Singapore was to reunite family members who had been separated as a result of border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The VTL was also implemented to boost Johor’s econo...

Russian airlines were barred from flying through more countries in Europe, shutting off carriers such as Aeroflot from the shortest routes heading west. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia prohibited Russian planes from landing or overflying their airspace on Saturday. They joined Poland, Bulgaria, Moldova, the Czech Republic and the U.K., which had already issued similar declarations in the wake of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Together with a no-fly zone in and around the area of conflict, Saturday’s moves wall off Russian carriers, forcing them to head north toward Finland or south as far as Turkey to get to countries such as France or the Netherlands. Russia retaliated, cutting off its airspace to Romanian, Polish, Czech and Bulgarian operators, adding to the list of ai...

PHNOM PENH: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will continue to take a “principled position” with regards to the situation in Myanmar, said Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Thursday (Feb 17). However, member states are determined not to allow the issue to "hijack" the ASEAN agenda, he added. Speaking to reporters during a virtual media doorstop, Dr Balakrishnan said whilst ASEAN will not interfere, it will not give legitimacy to the actions which the military have taken and are inflicting on the people of Myanmar. He noted that there will be “administrative wrinkles” such as how the regional bloc will interpret international agreements that ASEAN is party to, who gets to sign on behalf of Myanmar, and whether Myanmar will be able to enjoy the ben...

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The United Nations human rights expert on Myanmar said on Tuesday that Russia and China were providing the junta with fighter jets being used against civilians, and urged the U.N. Security Council to halt the flow of weapons enabling atrocities. Thomas Andrews, a former U.S. congressman serving in the independent post, released a report that also named Serbia as one of three countries supplying arms to the Myanmar military since it seized power last year, with "full knowledge that they would be used to attack civilians." "It should be incontrovertible that weapons used to kill civilians should no longer be transferred to Myanmar," Andrews said in a statement. Chaos has gripped Myanmar since a coup ended a decade of tentative democracy, triggering protests that troops suppressed with let...

This is an excerpt from the CNBC Make It newsletter. Subscribe here. When I started writing about money and careers, I was a recent college grad with a tenuous grasp on markets, credit and the world of personal finance. I didn't know what an index fund was, and my thoughts on budgeting boiled down to hoping I had enough money in my checking account to last until my next payday. I had a lot to learn. And over the past eight years working in professional media, I've been lucky enough to speak with countless people who have offered priceless wisdom and advice. Along the way, I've managed to snag a few promotions, grow my savings and build what I consider to be a decent work-life balance. Talking about index funds has become second nature. (I'm fun, I swear.) Below, I've gathered some of the m...

In this article AMZN FB GOOGL YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp apps displayed on a smartphone. Florian Gaertner | Photothek | Getty Images Executives at tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon are quitting to take jobs in the buzzy world of crypto. Blockchain platforms such as Polygon and Circle have hired top talent from Big Tech firms lately, enticing them with the pitch of working on the next "big thing" in tech — Web 3.0, or Web3. Ryan Wyatt left YouTube earlier this month to lead a new gaming studio from Polygon. Wyatt had joined the Google-owned video site back in 2014 to head up a push into video games content and compete more aggressively with Amazon's Twitch platform. "When I started at YouTube Gaming almost eight years ago, I was the first person there," Wyatt t...