World

DHARAMSALA, India: The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama celebrated turning 86 on Tuesday (Jul 6), thanking his supporters and expressing his appreciation for India, where he has lived since he fled his homeland in 1959. “I want to express my deep appreciation of all my friends who have really shown me love, respect and trust,” the Dalai Lama said in a video message. He reiterated his mission to serving humanity and urged supporters to be compassionate. “Since I became a refugee and now settled in India, I have taken full advantage of India's freedom and religious harmony,” he said. He added that he had great respect for India's secular values such as “honesty, karuna (compassion) and ahimsa (nonviolence)”. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet he had passed on...

GENEVA: A United Nations human rights investigator called on countries on Wednesday (Jul 7) to impose economic sanctions on Myanmar's oil and gas sector to cripple the junta that took power five months ago. Myanmar has been in crisis since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government on Feb 1, unleashing nationwide anger that quickly turned into protests and strikes brutally suppressed by security forces, with nearly 900 killed. "I am talking about economic pressure, cutting off the revenue that the military junta needs to continue its reign of terror. I'm talking about cutting access to weapons and dual-use technology," Thomas Andrews, special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told the UN Human Rights Council. No state had imposed sanctions on its oil and gas sect...

This year began with a question about whether we had done enough to secure a full economic recovery. Now the question is: can our economy handle this recovery? Prices are rising and they are rising fast — unsound fiscal policy and government spending are contributing to these higher costs. Families are feeling it when they buy groceries, fill up their tank, or book a plane ticket to finally reunite with relatives after a year and a half in lockdown. Democrats say it's transitory and prices will come down. Republicans say inflation is about to take root. I'd say this debate misses the forest for the trees. Increasing prices are a side effect, not the diagnosis. With more than 9 million job openings we should be seeing a return to work boom—but that's just not happening. Throughout the ...

JAKARTA: An influential firebrand cleric was sentenced to another four years in prison in Indonesia on Thursday (Jun 24) for concealing information about his coronavirus test result. The three-judge panel at East Jakarta District Court, which was under heavy police and military guard, ruled that Rizieq Shihab had lied about his COVID-19 test result, which made contact tracing more difficult. Shihab has been detained since Dec 13. The judges ordered the time he has already served to be deducted from his sentence. Authorities blocked streets leading to the court as thousands of Shihab’s supporters tried to stage a rally to demand his release. Police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hard-core followers who tried to approach the court. Hundreds who refused to leave were deta...

Covid-19 vaccines by Chinese firms Sinopharm (left) and Sinovac arrived at the Phnom Penh International Airport in Cambodia on June 8, 2021. Sovannara | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images Among countries with both high vaccination rates and high rates of Covid-19 infection, most rely on vaccines made in China, a CNBC analysis shows. The findings come as the efficacy of Chinese vaccines faces growing scrutiny, compounded by a lack of data on their protection against the more transmissible delta variant. CNBC found that weekly Covid cases, adjusted for population, have remained elevated in at least six of the world's most inoculated countries — and five of them rely on vaccines from China. CNBC identified 36 countries with more than 1,000 weekly new confirmed cases per million people as of J...

India and UK first Financial Markets Dialogue (FMD). India accounting for the UK’s second-largest source of investment in terms of the number of projects. The meeting was held to deepen bilateral ties in the financial sector, the British High Commission (BHC). The Dialogue saw government-to-government discussions to strengthen cooperation on four key themes: Gujarat International Finance Tec (GIFT) City; banking and payments; insurance, and; capital markets. It was led by senior officials from the UK Treasury and the Indian Ministry of Finance, with participation from independent British and Indian regulatory agencies, BHC said. The creation of the Financial Markets Dialogue to strengthen financial services cooperation and address regulatory barriers for UK and Indian firms was agre...

Apart from concerns over the newness of mRNA technology, other factors include fear of the side effects, a belief that vaccines are not necessary. religious convictions and also a general lack of awareness of how to get vaccinated, interviews show. SINGAPORE: Mr Paul Poh’s wife had been urging him to get vaccinated against COVID-19, even dangling the carrot of a safer environment for him to spend time with his grandchildren. But the 72-year-old retiree would not be rushed; it was only after the authorities allowed some private clinics to administer China’s Sinovac vaccine last month — to overwhelming demand — that he decided to register for his doses. He is now waiting to receive his first jab. His main reason for not participating in Singapore’s national vaccination programme — w...

The favourable market conditions for IPOs might be coming to an end and could pose a problem for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, says David Kuo. SINGAPORE: Many of us are familiar with SoftBank and its inspirational leader Masayoshi Son. After all, it has invested in many of the start-ups we are familiar with such as ByteDance, Grab, Klook, Slack, Uber, and WeWork. There is certainly a strong venture-capital feel about the way SoftBank operates, which is a far cry from its origins as a seller of software. Through its Vision Fund - home to around 90 start-ups at various stages of development - SoftBank hopes its heavy investments could one day grow into visionary businesses changing the world. Some already have grown into behemoths. The company’s US$20 million early investment in a tiny...

LONDON: Intel on Monday said it will work with India's Reliance Jio to develop 5G networking technology. Intel's venture capital unit last year invested US$250 million in Reliance Industries Ltd's Jio Platforms unit, saying the two companies would find areas of technology partnership. On Monday, Intel said it will work on "co-innovations" with Reliance Jio for its 5G radio-access network (RAN), among other things. "This is the fruit of that partnership," Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the data platforms group at Intel, told Reuters in an interview. "5G in India is going to be massive, and (Reliance Jio) are doing it in a non-legacy way." Reliance Jio is one of many carriers around the world using a new approach to build 5G networks. Rather than using g...