World

But when the pandemic struck, people in his neighbourhood feared that he could potentially spread the coronavirus. His sickly father - who is in his 80s - locked him up again as he lives alone and is unable to keep an eye on his son. Made is currently under the supervision of psychiatrist I Gusti Rai Putra Wiguna. “It is very difficult to eliminate shackling during the pandemic because the families are mentally stressed. “There is also the stigma that people with mental health illness are hard to manage according to COVID-19 health protocols,” Wiguna said. According to a Mediacorp survey, 36 per cent of people in Indonesia (out of a sample size of 1,000) said that their mental health has deteriorated as a result of the pandemic. Among those who mentioned that their mental health has ...

NATIONAL MOURNING The government has declared a period of national mourning which would continue until the state funeral, and an online book of condolence was opened. At the remote Balmoral Castle in Scotland where she died on Thursday and where her family gathered, people also arrived to pay their respects. "She was amazing. She was like everyone's granny. She always managed to capture the mood with her words," said Kay McClement, 55, who came with a friend to leave flowers at the castle. Some shed tears as they laid flowers outside the black railings of Buckingham Palace, the queen's home in central London. "I brought my young daughter here, because even though she won't remember it, we can tell her she was here as history was happening," said railway worker Liam Fitzjohn, 27. "She'...

NEW DELHI : India's annual retail inflation rate accelerated to 7 per cent in August, driven by a surge in food prices, putting more pressure on the central bank to hike interest rates again later this month. The monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has raised the benchmark repo rate by 140 basis points since May to 5.4 per cent, including 50 basis points last month, aiming to curb consumer demand. The government imposed curbs on rice exports last week after restricting exports of wheat and sugar earlier, to cool local prices as it is worried that the shortage of rainfall in some parts of the country could drive up food prices. The annual consumer price index-based inflation rate of 7.00 per cent in August snapped a three-month downward trend, data released...

General Motors Co outsold Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp in the United States in the third quarter, data on Monday showed, but analysts and investors are fretting that a darkening economic picture will lead to a drop in car sales. Thus far, a shortage of cars due to supply disruptions, combined with a preference for personal transport, has seen consumers willing to shell out more money, largely protecting profits at automakers and auto dealers who have pulled back on discounts. But analysts now warn demand may lose steam in the coming quarters as rising interest rates discourage consumers from paying more money for cars and trucks in the coming months. "We're cautiously optimistic about moving forward. There's a lot of negative consumer sentiment in the marketplace. So we're obvio...

SINGAPORE: A woman suffering from untreated schizophrenia listened to voices telling her that her eight-year-old daughter was an evil spirit and needed to be killed. She stabbed her daughter to death in front of her younger daughter, who was four at the time. The woman, who is now 36, cannot be named due to a gag order protecting the victim's identity. She pleaded guilty on Tuesday (Sep 20) to one count of murder, but was acquitted of the charge under Section 251 of the Criminal Procedure Code as she was of unsound mind at the time of the offence. The judge ordered that she be kept in safe custody in prison and for the case to be reported to the minister. According to Section 252 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the minister may then order her to be confined in a psychiatric institution,...

SINGAPORE: In order to commit a money exchange scam, a man used his friend's S$25,000 meant for bitcoin investment and roped in other friends to cheat a woman of 400,000 yuan (S$80,700). However, his friends failed in the scam when they tried to escape by bus and the victim caught up with them in a taxi. When the police were conducting their investigations, Lincoln Poh Chong Tee turned off his phone and hid it in a shoe rack outside his home, knowing it contained incriminating evidence. And in a separate incident, he took a knife to confront a man who was having drinks with his girlfriend and was eventually remanded in May this year. For his offences, Poh, 26, was sentenced to a year's jail on Thursday (Sep 15). He pleaded guilty to five charges of conspiring to cheat, obstructing the...

MELBOURNE : Australia have experienced T20 players ready to slot in "seamlessly" in place of captain Aaron Finch if required for the World Cup, paceman Josh Hazlewood said on Wednesday. Under pressure and out of form with the bat, Finch's place in the team is under scrutiny ahead of Australia's World Cup title defence on home soil. Team mates and selector George Bailey have backed Finch to dig himself out of his form slump and lead the team at the global tournament but Hazlewood stopped short of describing the opener's captaincy as essential. Asked how difficult it would be for Australia to have a new captain for the World Cup, Hazlewood said the team had senior players ready to step up. "All teams at the moment really feel like they're quite senior and there's a lot of guys who sort o...

MUMBAI: Demand for home loans is strong in India and is expected to pick up further over the next few months, the head of major housing finance firm Housing Development Finance Corporation said on Monday (Sep 12). "The economy is buoyant, the feel good factor is high, affordability is better so people are comfortable buying houses even if rates are slightly higher", Keki Mistry, chief executive of HDFC, told Reuters. India's central bank has already raised rates three times by a total of 140 basis points in this financial year to tame stubbornly high inflation, which has remained above the central bank's tolerance band for several months. Lenders have passed on the interest rate rises but Mistry said that there are no signs of stress among home buyers and collections on loan dues remain...

Adam Braun's first two entrepreneurial ventures had to do with education. First, he launched Pencils of Promise in 2008, a nonprofit organization that has started more than 500 schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua. In 2017, he launched the education startup MissionU, which WeWork acquired the following year. Braun's next venture, Climate Club, is focused on helping large companies engage their employees in reaching their climate goals. The company, which is emerging from stealth on Wednesday, is opening with Facebook parent company Meta and management consulting company Bain among its first pilot customers. Around a year ago, Braun and his college roommate at Brown, Philip Charm, got together with their 4-year-old children. "As we were watching our young children play, and r...

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's UN-backed Khmer Rouge war crimes court gave its final verdict on Thursday (Sep 22), upholding the genocide conviction and life sentence imposed on the regime's last surviving leader. The tribunal was ruling on an appeal by Khieu Samphan, head of state for the murderous communist regime, which wiped out a quarter of the Cambodian population in less than four years in the 1970s. It is the last verdict that will be issued by the tribunal, which has cost more than US$330 million and prosecuted only five Khmer Rouge leaders, two of whom died during proceedings. "The Supreme Court chamber finds no merit in Khieu Samphan's arguments regarding genocide and rejects them," Chief Judge Kong Srim said in the lengthy ruling. The court also upheld the 2018 convictions against ...