SYDNEY (REUTERS) – Several hundred passengers from the New Zealand city of Auckland are due to land in Sydney on Friday (Oct 16) as part of a new trans-Tasman travel bubble amid a rapidly falling growth rate in cases at the epicentre of Australia’s coronavirus outbreak. The Australian state of Victoria recorded just two new […]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants attacked a convoy of Pakistan’s biggest oil and gas exploration company in restive Baluchistan Province on Thursday, killing at least 14 people, officials said. The attack reflected an escalation of violence in the resource-rich province, where separatists have waged a low-intensity insurgency for decades and where the local population has long […]
SINGAPORE – Frequent reminders from their parents not to waste food drove home the message for four undergraduates, and inspired their latest project. The contraption – the brainchild of university students Aditya Chand, 21, Aamod Mehrish, 20, Ojus Sharma, 22, and Raghav Bhardwaj, 22 – weighs individual plates of food before and after a meal, […]
MANILA (REUTERS) – Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has lifted the moratorium on petroleum exploration in the South China Sea, paving the way for three projects to resume, including a possible joint venture with China. Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said on Thursday (Oct 15) that service contractors were notified to resume energy-related activity in the area, […]
HONG KONG – Hong Kong is not sidelined in Beijing’s plan for the Greater Bay Area, but rather, playing less of a leading role in the development of what is to be a regional economic powerhouse, some analysts believe. Associate Professor Sing Ming of the Hong Kong University of Technology and Science thinks the city […]
SINGAPORE – Despite the fact that one in seven adults in Singapore experiences mental health issues at some point in his life, most Singaporeans do not think they know someone who has, said Dr Wan Rizal Wan Zakariah (Jalan Besar GRC) on Thursday (Oct 15). This suggests that many are simply unaware that people they […]
SINGAPORE -The size and significance of the unprecedented $52 billion that Singapore has drawn from its reserves to mount a quick and strong response to the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic should not be underestimated , Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said in Parliament on Thursday (Oct 15). He was responding to points made […]
MOSCOW — After more than a week in hiding following a disputed election, the president of Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia’s only democracy — on Thursday announced his plans to resign, saying that he did not want to go down in history as a leader “who shed blood and shot at his own citizens.” In a […]
SINGAPORE – The Workers’ Party’s proposal for a universal minimum wage could leave workers and businesses worse off, with the exercise to determine the wage level devolving into a political auction, said NTUC deputy secretary-general Koh Poh Koon on Thursday (Oct 15). He added that the Government’s policies, particularly the Progressive Wage Model (PWM) that […]
JAKARTA/MANILA – Indonesia has overtaken the Philippines to become South-east Asia’s new pandemic hot spot on Thursday (Oct 15), as it struggles to contain surging Covid-19 infections with fresh cases hitting 4,000 cases a day. With 4,411 new cases in the past 24 hours, Indonesia’s tally hit 349,160 on Thursday – the highest in South-east Asia. There have been […]