World

SINGAPORE: A Malaysian doctor who sexually assaulted patients after sedating them has been deported from New Zealand back to Malaysia, according to media reports on Wednesday (Aug 3). David Lim Kang Huat was convicted of sexually assaulting four men while they were unconscious at a clinic located in Hastings, a city in New Zealand’s North Island in 2014. The victims, who had consulted Lim for minor ailments, were sedated with the anesthetic Midazolam, the New Zealand Herald reported. They woke up to find the general practitioner rubbing their private parts. In a report from 2017 covering Lim’s court hearing, the newspaper quoted a crown prosecutor saying the victims were aged between 18 and 30. DEPORTED AFTER SERVING SENTENCE Lim, who is reported to have transitioned from male to fem...

SINGAPORE: A man was on Friday (Jul 15) found guilty of sexually assaulting his sister's friend, who was staying over at his family's flat after a night of drinking in 2016. Norvan Tan En Jie, 26, was convicted after claiming trial to two counts of sexual assault by penetration and two counts of outrage of modesty. The identity of the victim, who was 19 at the time, is protected by gag order. She was a friend of Tan's sister. The victim and Tan's sister returned to the flat in the early morning on Dec 26, 2016. The victim was heavily intoxicated and Tan's sister had to help her change her clothes. Around the same time, Tan returned home with two friends. Deputy Public Prosecutors Ng Yiwen, Sheryl Yeo and Niranjan Ranjakunalan put forth the case that the assaults took place while Tan's ...

Myanmar's Southeast Asian neighbours issued a stinging rebuke on Tuesday (Jul 26) of the ruling military's execution of four political activists, calling it "highly reprehensible" and destructive to regional efforts to de-escalate the crisis. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Myanmar, said it "denounces and is strongly disappointed" by the executions, as well as by their timing, just a week ahead of the bloc's next meeting. "While the complexity of the crisis is well recognised and the extreme bellicose mood can be felt from all corners of Myanmar, ASEAN as a whole has called for utmost restraint," said Cambodia, this year's ASEAN chair, in an unusually strong statement. "The implementation of the death sentences just a week before the 55th ASE...

TOKYO: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet Japanese officials in Tokyo on Friday (Aug 5), following a visit to Taiwan that Beijing answered with unprecedented military drills and missile launches including five that landed within Japan's exclusive economic zone. Pelosi's brief trip to Taiwan, where she arrived unannounced with a congressional delegation late on Tuesday and left on Wednesday, marked the highest-level US visit to the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own, in 25 years. It also came as Tokyo, one of Washington's closest allies, has been increasingly alarmed about China's growing might in the Indo-Pacific and the possibility that Beijing could take military action against Taiwan. Pelosi lauded Taiwan's democracy and pledged American solidari...

Julie Berninger has always had a side hustle. Even as she worked in tech by day, the now Massachusetts-based 33-year-old kept a blog, was producing a podcast and started an Etsy shop where she sold printable items like bachelorette party scavenger hunts. "I always was doing a million different things and even before the side hustles I was getting my master's online while working," she says. In 2019, Berninger founded Gold City Ventures with her partner, Cody Berman, a business of online courses focused on side gigs. Their most popular is a course about starting an Etsy store for printable items like the one she herself has. In 2021, Gold City Ventures brought in $1 million in revenue. She quit her job at Amazon in July 2021 to focus full time on the business. Berninger knows part of her su...

An aerial view of Phillips 66 oil refinery is seen in Linden, New Jersey, United States. Oil prices rose in early Asian trade on Thursday, bouncing off multi-month lows in the previous session caused by data signaling weak U.S. fuel demand. Global oil prices dropped on Thursday to their lowest levels since before Russia's February invasion of Ukraine as traders fretted over the possibility of an economic recession later this year that could torpedo energy demand. Benchmark Brent crude futures ended the day 2.75% lower at $94.12 a barrel after touching a mid-session low of $93.20, the lowest since Feb. 21. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled 2.3% lower at $88.54 per barrel, after touching the lowest since Feb. 3. The fall in oil prices could come as a relief to large cons...

NEW DELHI : India will allow SpiceJet Ltd to reinstate flights in a "graded manner" once the airline shows it has sufficient engineering strength and the financial ability to stock up on spares, the country's air safety watchdog told Reuters. Last week, in an unprecedented move, India slashed SpiceJet's approved departures by 50 per cent for a period of eight weeks after an audit revealed the airline's inability to establish "a safe, efficient and reliable" service. While placing SpiceJet under "enhanced surveillance", the regulator stated in its notice there was "poor internal safety oversight" at the airline, and that financial issues at the carrier were leading to "frequent shortage of spares". The chief of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Arun Kumar, said SpiceJet w...

MELBOURNE: Oil prices fell on Monday (Jul 11) in volatile trade, reversing some gains from the previous session as markets braced for new mass COVID-19 testing in China potentially hitting demand, a worry that outweighed ongoing concerns about tight supply. Brent crude futures fell US$1.02, or 1 per cent, to US$106.00 at 0605 GMT, after climbing 2.3 per cent on Friday. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures declined by US$1.38, or 1.3 per cent, to US$103.41, paring a 2 per cent gain from Friday. Trading was thinned by a public holiday in parts of Southeast Asia, including oil trading hub Singapore. The market was rattled by news that China had discovered its first case of a highly transmissible Omicron subvariant in Shanghai and that new cases had jumped to 63 in the country's ...

ISLAMAB : Pakistan's powerful army chief appealed to Washington to use its leverage to secure the early release of International Monetary Fund money, Pakistani sources said on Friday, as the South Asian nation struggles to stave off an economic crisis. Pakistan's foreign office confirmed a phone conversation between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and General Qamar Javed Bajwa, but did not provide details. Islamabad and the IMF reached a staff-level agreement earlier this month to pave the way for the release of a tranche of $1.17 billion - but the lender is awaiting approval from its board, which is not scheduled to meet until late August. Multiple Pakistani government sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity that Bajwa asked the U.S. to help speed up the release...

TOKYO : Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co is ready to buy U.S. Treasuries at a yield of 3 per cent without currency hedging, if the dollar falls below 135 yen, a senior company official said on Wednesday. In an interview with Reuters, Yoshimasa Osaki, head of investment planning at one of Japan's Big Four private life insurers, said foreign-currency bonds with a yield of 3 per cent or more look attractive when Japanese government bond (JGB) yields are so low. "Even for U.S. Treasuries, 3 per cent is quite a fortunate yield which you don't come across very often in the long run. So if the dollar slips below 135 yen, it will be a good chance to buy without a hedge," said Osaki. Osaki said the firm thinks both Treasury yields and the dollar have already hit their peaks. The 10-year U.S. Trea...