World

COVID-19 treatments and improved hospital care have reduced death rates in intensive care by more than a third since the early months of the pandemic, but this progress might be stalling, according to research published Tuesday. Whereas medical staff in the first wave of the pandemic had few insights to help them tackle the new virus, they now have some effective drugs and therapies for treating severely ill patients. A large-scale meta-analysis of overall mortality of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) around the world, published in the journal Anaesthesia, found that it had fallen to 36% by October. An earlier analysis by the same authors found that ICU mortality had fallen from 60% in late March 2020 to 42% at the end of May. “After our first meta-analysis last year sh...

SINGAPORE: Singapore gaming company Razer’s co-founder and director Lim Kaling said on Tuesday (Feb 9) that he will exit his investment in a tobacco firm in Myanmar after the military coup there caused him “grave concern". In a statement issued to the media, Mr Lim said he is disposing of his one-third stake in a joint venture that owns RMH Singapore, which in turn owns 49 per cent of Myanmar’s cigarette maker Virginia Tobacco Company. The businessman added that he has always been “a passive minority shareholder with no direct involvement” in the operations of Virginia Tobacco. Mr Lim also noted that this investment in Myanmar – his “only remaining” exposure in the country – was started nearly three decades ago under very different circumstances. “The joint venture I started wi...

Prepaid cards are an easy way to manage your spending since you preload a set amount of cash on the card before you use it. Parents, therefore, can benefit from prepaid cards because they can help them manage their kids spending money with a little less risk. But sometimes the fees on prepaid cards outweigh the benefits. We reviewed nearly a dozen prepaid cards and found it wasn't exactly easy to narrow our list down to cards with monthly fees under $10. The Bluebird® by American Express prepaid card is one option with no monthly fee and a $0 fee when you open your card online (or up to $5 in stores). This card is suitable for families, since users can open separate cards on the same account, called subaccounts, for their children ages 13 and up. There's also an easy-to-use mobile app to h...

CARACAS: Iraia Arrue chases a ball down the soccer field until she loses it near the goal line amid shouts from the bleachers and from her own team, sprinting for 90 minutes under the Venezuelan sun in a sports complex in eastern Caracas. Arrue's team, Deportivo Petare, is vying for a spot in the women's Conmebol Libertadores tournament in March to represent Venezuela, where soccer has historically struggled to draw crowds. Deportivo Petare's 1-1 tie last week against rival Atletico Sport Club left it no closer to qualifying, but Arrue says there's nothing more exciting than the possibility of playing against the best-known South American clubs. "The emotion that one experiences from playing, for example, against Boca Junior, playing against Corinthians, from Brazil, it would be inc...

related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. 2 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. Indian technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned U.S. social media firms on Thursday to abide by the country's laws, a day after a face-off between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Twitter over content regulation. NEW DELHI: Indian technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned U.S. social media firms on Thursday to abide by the country's laws, a day after a face-off between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Twitter over content regulation. Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad mentioned Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp by name and said they were welcome to op...