World

BANGKOK : Thai workers who were sacked last year from a factory supplying global lingerie brands including Victoria's Secret will receive $8.3 million, in what labour activists say is the biggest settlement of its kind in the global garment industry. About 1,200 workers were laid off without severance pay and wages owed to them by Brilliant Alliance Thai Global Co Ltd (BAT) after it went bankrupt and shut down its factory in Samut Prakan province in March 2021. The incident was one of "hundreds of cases of wage theft" that labour activists say took place in the garment industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. The settlement, financed by Victoria's Secret in a loan arrangement with BAT's owner, could set a precedent for global brands to better protect the rights of workers in their supply c...

Utari Octavianty is no stranger to imposter syndrome. The 28-year-old is the co-founder of Aruna, an Indonesian farm-to-table e-commerce start-up that gives fishermen direct access to global consumers, fetching fair prices for their catch. "When we talked to other [start-up] founders, they came from Harvard, Stanford, and suddenly there's us — from a local university in Indonesia," she told CNBC Make It. "But somehow that became the motivation, it's not the education that matters. It's how we create impact," she said. If this business grows bigger and bigger, is my experience enough to handle all of this? Utari Octavianty Co-founder, Aruna Indeed, the impact that she and her co-founders, Farid Naufal Aslam and Indraka Fadhlillah, have created is far-reaching — over 26,000 fishermen acros...

:The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a Texas law that bars large social media companies from banning or censoring users based on "viewpoint," siding with two technology industry groups that have argued that the Republican-backed measure would turn platforms into "havens of the vilest expression imaginable." The justices, in a 5-4 decision, granted a request by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which count Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as members, to block the law while litigation continues after a lower court on May 11 let it go into effect. The industry groups sued to try to block the law, challenging it as a violation of the free speech rights of companies, including to editorial discretion on their platforms, under the U.S. Constitution's First Am...

So is there any way to detect lies based on real science? Actually, yes, and it involves understanding the psychology behind how liars think. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has even said that "the Federal government should not rely on polygraph examinations for screening prospective or current employees, or to identify spies or other national security risks because the test results are too inaccurate." In fact, polygraphs aren't reliable. With as little as 15 minutes of training, people have been able to consistently beat the test. Humans have been trying to master lie detection for thousands of years — and failing miserably. In 2009, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) was formed to develop new lie detection best practices, and by 2016, they had spent more than $1...

LONDON: Roman Abramovich has completed the sale of Chelsea and related companies to an investment group led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, the Premier League club said on Monday (May 30), ending a three-month process to sell the club. The consortium, which won the bid to acquire the London side earlier this month, received approval from the Premier League and the British government last week for the sale to go ahead. A final agreement was reached on Saturday. Russian owner Abramovich put the club up for sale in early March following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special military operation". Sanctions on Abramovich had also complicated the sale process. "In selling the club, Mr Abramovich stipulated that the new owner must be a good steward of the club, the n...

WASHINGTON :President Joe Biden waived tariffs on solar panels from four Southeast Asian nations for two years and invoked the Defense Production Act to spur solar panel manufacturing at home, the White House said on Monday, confirming a Reuters report. The tariff exemption applies to panels from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and will serve as a "bridge" while U.S. manufacturing ramps up, the White House said. Shares in U.S. solar companies including SunPower Corp, Enphase Energy Inc and Sunrun Inc climbed after Reuters earlier reported that Biden would issue a proclamation that ensured panels accounting for some 80 per cent of U.S. imports would not face tariffs, which could have been levied retroactively as part of a Commerce Department probe. The move comes in response to ...

Consumers are now demanding environmental accountability in everything — from the buildings they live in to the products they purchase. Food is a big one. While more and more food companies are claiming that their products are "sustainable," a Stone Ridge, New York-based start-up is taking a close look at those claims. The company is called HowGood. HowGood analyzes thousands of ingredients — more than 33,000 so far, the company says — looking at factors like the product's greenhouse gas emissions, its water usage, land usage, soil biodiversity impact, potential deforestation and concern for animal welfare. Every ingredient in every product has a different level of environmental impact, all of which change region to region. For each product analysis, HowGood takes in close to 250 differe...

NEW YORK/LONDON :Shares slid worldwide on Tuesday as supply chain woes and surging costs hurt corporate earnings and manufacturing output slowed, while Treasury yields dipped as the weakness in equities revived a safe-haven bid for U.S. government debt. The stock market's two-day relief rally ended as investors worried about slowing economies. Corporate profit margins have been squeezed, with soaring inflation forcing consumers to cut discretionary spending. U.S. and euro zone business activity slowed in May. S&P Global attributed the decline in its U.S. Composite PMI Output to "elevated inflationary pressures, a further deterioration in supplier delivery times and weaker demand growth." Surging freight and raw material prices led Abercrombie & Fitch Co to say it will face headwinds unt...

LONDON: Britain's railway workers on Tuesday (Jun 21) began the network's biggest strike action in more than three decades, as a cost-of-living crisis caused by surging inflation risks wider industrial action. Last-ditch talks to avert the strike broke down on Monday, meaning more than 50,000 members of rail union RMT will walk out for three days this week. RMT general-secretary Mick Lynch described as "unacceptable" offers of below-inflation pay rises by both overground train operators and London Underground that runs the Tube in the capital. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the government was doing everything it could to minimise the expected "mass disruption". But he told parliament on Monday: "It's estimated that around 20 per cent of planned services will operate, focused on ...

SEOUL: A week-long strike by truck drivers in South Korea has disrupted shipments to China of a key material used in the production of semiconductors, the Korean International Trade Association (KITA) said on Tuesday (Jun 14) It was the first sign that the strike was affecting the global supply chain of chip production, having already cost South Korean industry more than US$1.2 billion in lost output and unfilled deliveries. KITA said a Korean company that produces isopropyl alcohol (IPA), a chemical used in the cleaning of chip wafers, faces difficulties in shipping to a Chinese company that in turn supplies wafers to chipmakers. About 90 tonnes of the material, or a week's worth of shipments, have been delayed, the trade body said in a statement. It corrected an earlier statement tha...