UN climate chief urges COP30 negotiators to not ‘waste time on stonewalling’
Ministers and communicators have a lot of work to do. I urge you to quickly tackle the most pressing problems,” Stiell told the group.
He said,” We absolutely cannot afford to waste time on military difficulties or stonewalling.”
As the next and last year of talks approach, government ministers from all over the world are attempting to break the deadlock in Belem.
After a year of speaks in the Tropical city, three issues hampered progress:
China, India, and other allies want COP30 to make a decision against unilateral trade restrictions, which is a mockery of the European Union’s” carbon income” on exports of carbon-intensive goods like titanium, aluminum, and nutrients.
Forecasts FAIL TO LIMIT 1. 5 COULD BE
However, island states that are vulnerable to rising lakes, supported by Latin American nations and the EU, consider it important for COP30 to follow up on recent projections that the world may not be able to reach its 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit and raise their commitments to climate change.
However, the majority of emerging markets, including Saudi Arabia and China, do not want to read any language that suggests they are not doing enough to combat climate change.
Second point of disagreement is a request by developing countries, especially those from Africa, to accuse developed nations of failing to provide funding to help them adapt to climate change and reduce emissions.
Next financial meltdown could be much worse with US on sidelines – Asia Times
This is the second in a two-part series. Read part one here.
Globalization has always had its critics – but until recently, they have come mainly from the left rather than the right.
In the wake of the Second World War, as the world economy grew rapidly under US dominance, many on the left argued that the gains of globalization were unequally distributed, increasing inequality in rich countries while forcing poorer countries to implement free-market policies such as opening up their financial markets, privatizing their state industries and rejecting expansionary fiscal policies in favour of debt repayment – all of which mainly benefited US corporations and banks.
This was not a new concern. Back in 1841, German economist Friedrich List had argued that free trade was designed to keep Britain’s global dominance from being challenged, suggesting:
When anyone has obtained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he climbs up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him.
By the 1990s, critics of the US vision of a global world order such as the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argued that globalization in its current form benefited the US at the expense of developing countries and workers – while author and activist Naomi Klein focused on the negative environmental and cultural consequences of the global expansion of multinational companies.
Left-led mass demonstrations broke out, disrupting global economic meetings including, most famously, the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999. During this “battle of Seattle,” violent exchanges between protesters and police prevented the launch of a new world trade round that had been backed by the US president, Bill Clinton.
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For a while, the mass mobilization of a coalition of trade unionists, environmentalists and anti-capitalist protesters seemed set to challenge the path towards further globalization – with anti-capitalism “Occupy” protests spreading around the world in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
In the US, a further critique of globalization centered on its domestic consequences for American workers – namely, job losses and lower pay – and led to calls for greater protectionism.
Although initially led by trade unions and some Democratic politicians, this critique gradually gained purchase in radical right circles that opposed giving any role to international organizations such as the WTO, on the grounds that they impinged on American sovereignty. According to this view, only by stopping foreign competition whose low wages undercut American workers could prosperity be restored. Immigration was another target.
Donald Trump in his second term as US president has transformed these criticisms into radical, deeply disruptive economic and social policies – with tariffs and protectionism at their heart. In so doing, Trump – despite all his grandstanding on the world stage – has confirmed what has long been clear to close observers of US politics and business: that the American century of global dominance, with the dollar as unrivaled number one currency, is drawing rapidly to a close.
Even before Trump first took office in 2017, the US had begun to withdraw from its leadership role in international economic institutions such as the WTO. Now, the strongest part of its economy, the high-tech sector, is under intense pressure from China, whose economy is already bigger than that of the United States by one key measure of GDP. Meanwhile, facing the majority of US citizens are stagnant incomes, higher prices and more insecure jobs.
In previous centuries, when first France and then Great Britain reached the end of their eras of world domination, these transitions had painful impacts beyond their borders. This time, with the global economy more closely integrated than ever before and no single dominant power waiting in the wings to take over, the impacts could be felt even more widely – with very damaging, if not catastrophic, results.
Why no one is ready to take the US’s place
When it comes to taking over from the US as the world’s leading hegemonic power, the only viable candidates with big enough economies are the European Union and China. But there are strong reasons to doubt that either could take on this role.
That’s notwithstanding the fact that in 2022, then US president Joe Biden’s National Security Strategy called China: “The only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so.” At times Biden’s successor, President Trump, has sounded almost jealous of the control China’s leaders exert over their national economy, and the fact they do not face elections and limits on their terms in office.
But a one-party, authoritarian political system that lacks legal checks and balances is a key reason China will find it hard to gain the cultural and political dominance among democratic nations that is part of achieving world number one status – despite the influence it already wields in large parts of Asia and Africa.
China still faces big economic challenges too. While it is already the global leader in manufactured goods (rapidly moving into high-tech products) and the world’s largest exporter, its economy is still very unbalanced – with a much smaller consumer sector, a weak property market, many inefficient state industries that are highly indebted and a relatively small financial sector restricted by state ownership. Nor does China possess a global currency, despite its (limited) attempts to make the renminbi a truly international currency.
I found on a reporting trip to Shanghai in 2007 to investigate the effects of globalization, there were enormous differences between China’s prosperous coastal megacities – whose main thoroughfares rival New York and Paris – and the relative poverty in the interior, especially in rural areas. Nearly two decades on from that visit, with the country’s growth rate slowing, many university-educated young people are also finding it hard to find well-paid jobs now.
Meanwhile, Europe – the only other contender to take the US’s place as global number one – is deeply politically divided, with smaller, weaker economies to the east and south far more skeptical about the benefits of globalization, and increasingly divided on issues such as migration and the Ukraine war.
The challenges of achieving broad policy agreement among all member states and the problem of who can speak for Europe make it unlikely that the EU as currently constituted could initiate and enforce a new global world order on its own.
The EU’s financial system also lacks the heft of the American one. Although the EU has a common currency (the euro) managed by the European Central Bank, its financial system is far more fragmented. Banks are regulated nationally, and each country issues its own government bonds (although a few eurobonds now exist). This makes it hard for the euro to replace the dollar as a store of value, and reduces the incentive for foreigners to hold euros as an alternative reserve currency.
Meanwhile, any future prospects of a renewal of US global leadership look similarly unpromising. Trump’s policy of cutting taxes while increasing the size of the US government debt – which now stands at US$38 trillion, or 120% of GDP – threatens both the stability of the world economy and the ability of the US to finance this mind-boggling deficit.
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Tellingly, the Trump administration shows no interest in reviving, or even engaging with, many of the international financial institutions that America once dominated and that helped shape the world economic order – as US trade representative Jamieson Greer expressed disdainfully in the New York Times recently:
Our current, nameless global order, which is dominated by the WTO and is notionally designed to pursue economic efficiency and regulate the trade policies of its 166 member countries, is untenable and unsustainable. The US has paid for this system with the loss of industrial jobs and economic security, and the biggest winner has been China.
While the US is not, so far, withdrawing from the IMF, the Trump administration has urged it to call out China for running such a large trade surplus and has abandoned its concern about climate change. Greer concluded that the US has “subordinated our country’s economic and national security imperatives to a lowest common denominator of global consensus”.
World without a global no.1
To understand the potential dangers ahead, we must go back more than a century to the last time there was no global hegemon. By the time the first world war officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28 1919, the international economic order had collapsed. Britain, world leader over the previous century, no longer possessed the economic, political or military clout to enforce its version of globalization.
The UK government, burdened by the huge debts it had taken out to finance the war effort, was forced to make major cuts in public spending. In 1931, it faced a sterling crisis: the pound had to be devalued as the UK exited from the gold standard for good, despite having yielded to the demands of international bankers to cut payments to the unemployed. This was a final sign that Britain had lost its dominant place in the world economic order.
The 1930s were a time of deep political unease and unrest in Britain and many other countries.
In 1936, unemployed workers from Jarrow, a town in northeastern England with 70% unemployment after its shipyards closed, organized a non-political “hunger march” to London, which became known as the Jarrow crusade. More than 200 men, dressed in their Sunday best, marched peacefully in step for over 200 miles, gaining great support along the way. Yet when they reached London, prime minister Stanley Baldwin ignored their petition – and the men were informed their dole money would be docked because they had been unavailable for work over the previous fortnight.
Europe was also facing a severe economic crisis. After Germany’s government refused to pay the reparations agreed in the 1919 Versailles treaty, saying they would bankrupt its economy, the French army occupied the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr and German workers went on strike, supported by their government.
The ensuing struggle fuelled hyperinflation in Germany. By November 1923, it took 200,000 million marks to buy a loaf of bread, and the savings and pensions of the German middle class were wiped out. That month, Adolf Hitler made his first attempt to seize power in the failed “Beer hall putsch” in Munich.
In contrast, across the Atlantic, the US was enjoying a period of postwar prosperity, with a booming stock market and explosive growth of new industries such as car manufacturing. But despite emerging as the world’s strongest economic power, having financed much of the Allied war effort, it was unwilling to grasp the reins of global economic leadership.
The Republican US Congress, having blocked President Woodrow Wilson’s plan for a League of Nations, instead embraced isolationism and washed its hands of Europe’s problems. The US refused to cancel or even reduce the war debts owed it by the Allied nations, which eventually repudiated their debts. In retaliation, the US Congress banned all American banks from lending money to those so-called allies.
Then, in 1929, the affluent American “jazz age” came to an abrupt halt with a stock market crash that wiped off half its value. The country’s largest manufacturer, Ford, closed its doors for a year and laid off all its workers. With a quarter of the nation unemployed, long lines for soup kitchens were seen in every city, while those who had been evicted camped out wherever they could – including in New York’s Central Park, renamed “Hooverville” after the hapless US president of that time, Herbert Hoover.
In rural areas where the collapse in agricultural prices meant farmers could no longer make their living, armed farmers stopped food and milk trucks and destroyed their contents in a vain attempt to limit supply and raise prices. By March 1933, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the entire US banking system had ground to a standstill, with no one able to withdraw money from a bank account.
With its focus on this devastating Great Depression, the US refused to get involved in attempts at international economic cooperation. With no notice, Roosevelt withdrew from the 1933 London Conference which had been called to stabilize the world’s currencies – sending a message denouncing “the old fetishes of the so-called international bankers.”
With the US following the UK off the gold standard, the resulting currency wars exacerbated the crisis and further weakened European economies. As countries reverted to mercantilist policies of protectionism and trade wars, world trade shrank dramatically.
The situation became even worse in central Europe, where the collapse of the huge Credit-Anstalt bank in Austria in 1931 reverberated around the region. In Germany, as mass unemployment soared, centrist parties were squeezed and armed riots broke out between communist and fascist supporters. When the Nazis came to power, they introduced a policy of autarky, cutting economic ties with the west to build up their military machine.
The economic rivalries and antagonisms that weakened western economies paved the way for the rise of fascism in Germany. In some sense, Hitler – an admirer of the British empire – aspired to be the next hegemonic economic as well as military power, creating his own empire by conquering and ruthlessly exploiting the resources of the rest of Europe.
Nearly a century later, there are some disturbing parallels with that interwar period. Like America after the First World War, Trump insists that countries the US has supported militarily now owe it money for this protection. He wants to encourage currency wars by devaluing the dollar, and raise protectionist barriers to protect domestic industry. The 1920s was also a time when the US sharply limited immigration on eugenic grounds, only allowing it from northern European countries that (the eugenicists argued) would not “pollute the white race”.
Clearly, Trump does not view the lack of international cooperation that could amplify the damaging economic effects of a stock or bond market crash as a problem that should concern him. And in today’s unstable world, for all the US’s past failings as a global leader, that is a very worrying proposition.
How the US responded to the last financial crisis
Once again, the rules of the international order are breaking down. While it is possible that Trump’s approach will not be fully adopted by his successor in the White House, the direction of travel in the US will almost certainly remain sceptical about the benefits of globalisation, with limited support for any worldwide economic rules or initiatives.
We see similar scepticism about the benefits of globalization emerging in other countries, amid the rise of rightwing populist parties in much of Europe and South America – many backed by Trump. Fueling these parties’ support are growing concerns about income inequality, slow growth and immigration that are not being addressed by the current political system – and all of which would be exacerbated by the onset of a new global economic crisis.
With the global economy and financial system far bigger than ever before, a new crisis could be even more severe than the one that occurred in 2008, when the failure of the banking system left the world teetering on the brink of collapse. The scale of that crisis was unprecedented, but key US and UK government officials moved boldly and swiftly.
As a BBC reporter in Washington, to find out the administration’s response I attended the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee hearing three days after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and paralyzed the global financial system. I remember the stunned look on the face of the committee’s chairman, Barney Frank, when he asked US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson and US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke how much money they might need to stabilise the situation:
“Let’s start with US$1 trillion,” Bernanke replied coolly. “But we have another US$2 trillion on our balance sheet if we need it.”
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Shortly afterward, the US Congress approved a US$700 billion rescue package. While the global economy still has not fully recovered from this crisis, it could have been far worse – possibly as bad as the 1930s – without such intervention.
Around the world, governments ended up pledging US$11 trillion to guarantee the solvency of their banking systems, with the UK government putting up a sum equivalent to the country’s entire yearly GDP. But it was not just governments. At the G20 summit in London in April 2009, a new US$1.1 trillion fund was set up by the IMF to advance money to countries that were getting into financial difficulty.
The G20 also agreed to impose tougher regulatory standards for banks and other financial institutions that would apply globally, to replace the weak regulation of banks that had been one of the main causes of the crisis. As a reporter at that summit, I recall widespread excitement and optimism that the world was finally working together to tackle its global problems, with the host prime minister, Gordon Brown, briefly glowing in the limelight as organizer of that summit.
Behind the scenes, the US Federal Reserve had also been working to contain the crisis by quietly passing on to the world’s other leading central banks nearly US$600 billion in “currency swaps” to ensure they had the dollars they needed to bail out their own banking systems.
The Bank of England secretly lent UK banks £100 billion to ensure they didn’t collapse, although two of the four major banks, Royal Bank of Scotland (now NatWest) and Lloyds, ultimately had to be nationalized (to different extents) to keep the financial system stable.
However, these rescue packages for banks, while much needed to stabilize the global economy, did not extend to many of the victims of the crash – such as the 12 million US households whose homes were now worth less than the mortgages they had taken out to pay for them, or the 40% of households who experienced financial distress during the 18 months after the crash. And the ramifications of the crisis were even greater for those living in developing countries.
A few months after the 2008 financial crisis began, I travelled to Zambia, an African country totally dependent on copper exports for its foreign exchange. I visited the Luanshya copper mine near Ndola in the country’s copper belt. Due to collapsing demand for copper (used mainly in construction and car manufacturing), all the copper mines had closed. Their workers, in one of the few well-paid jobs in Zambia, were forced to leave their comfortable company homes and return to sharing with their relatives in Lusaka without pay.
Zambia’s government was forced to shut down its planned poverty reduction plan, which was to be funded by mining profits. The collapse in exports also damaged the Zambian currency, which dropped sharply. That hit the country’s poorest people hard as it raised the price of food, most of which was imported.
I also visited a flower farm near Lusaka, where Dutch expats Angelique and Watze Elsinga had been growing roses for export for over a decade – employing more than 200 workers, who were given housing and education. As the market for Valentine’s Day roses collapsed, their bankers, Barclays South Africa, suddenly ordered them to repay, immediately, all their loans, forcing them to sell their farm and dismiss their workers. Ultimately, it took a US$3.9 billion loan from the IMF and World Bank to stabilize Zambia’s economy.
Should another global financial crisis hit, it is hard to see the Trump administration (and others that follow) being as sympathetic to the plight of developing countries, or allowing the Federal Reserve to lend major sums to foreign central banks – unless the borrower is a country politically aligned with Trump, such as Argentina. Least likely of all is the idea of Trump working with other countries to develop a global trillion-dollar rescue package to help save the world economy.
Rather, there is a real worry that reckless actions by the Trump administration – and weak global regulation of financial markets – could trigger the next global financial crisis.
What happens if the US bond market collapses?
Economic historians agree that financial crises are endemic in the history of global capitalism, and they have been increasing in frequency since the “hyper-globalization” of the 1970s. From Latin America’s debt crisis in the 1980s to the Asia currency crisis in the late 1990s and the US dotcom stock market collapse in the early 2000s, crises have regularly devastated economies and regions around the world.
Today, the greatest risk is the collapse of the US Treasury bond market, which underpins the global financial system and is involved in 70% of global financial transactions by banks and other financial institutions. Around the world, these institutions have long regarded the US bond market, worth over $30 trillion, as a safe haven, because these “debt securities” are backed by the US central bank, the Federal Reserve.
Increasingly, the unregulated “shadow banking system” – a sector now larger than regulated global banks – is deeply involved in the bond market. Non-bank financial institutions such as private equity, hedge funds, venture capital and pension funds are largely unregulated and, unlike banks, are not required to hold reserves.
Bond market jitters are already unnerving global financial markets, which fear its unravelling could precipitate a banking crisis on the scale of 2008 – with highly leveraged transactions by these non-bank financial institutions leaving them exposed.
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Buyers of US bonds are also troubled by the Trump administration’s plan to raise the US deficit even higher to pay for tax cuts – with the national debt now forecast to rise to 134% of US GDP by 2035, up from 120% in 2025. Should this lead to a widespread refusal to buy more US bonds among jittery investors, their value would collapse and interest rates – both in the US and globally – would soar.
The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, recently warned that the situation has “worrying echoes of the 2008 financial crisis,” while the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, said her worries about the collapse of private credit markets sometimes keep her awake at night.
A bad situation would grow even worse if problems in the bond market precipitate a sharp decline in the value of the dollar. The world’s “anchor currency” would no longer be seen as a safe store of value – leading to more withdrawals of funds from the US Treasury bond market, where many foreign governments hold their reserves.
A weaker dollar would also make imported goods more expensive for US consumers, while potentially boosting the country’s exports. This is precisely the course of action advocated by Stephen Miran, chair of the US president’s Council of Economic Advisors – whom Trump appears to want to be the next head of the Federal Reserve.
One example of what could happen if bond markets become destabilized occurred when the shortest-lived prime minister in UK history, Liz Truss, announced huge unfunded tax cuts in her 2022 budget, causing the value of UK gilts (the equivalent of US Treasury bonds) to plummet as interest rates spiked. Within days, the Bank of England was forced to put up an emergency £60 billion rescue fund to avoid major UK pension funds collapsing.
In the case of a US bond market crash, however, there are growing fears that the US government would be unable – and unwilling – to step in to mitigate such damage.
A new era of financial chaos
Just as worrying would be a crash of the US stock market – which, by historic standards, is currently vastly overvalued.
Huge recent increases in the US stock market’s overall value have been driven almost entirely by the “magnificent seven” hi-tech companies, which alone make up a third of its total value. If their big bet on artificial intelligence is not as lucrative as they claim, or is overshadowed by the success of China’s AI systems, a sharp downturn, similar to the dotcom crash of 2000-02, could well occur.
Big tech executives have been overoptimistic before. Reporting from Silicon Valley in 2001 as the dotcom bubble was bursting, I was struck by the unshakeable belief of internet startup CEOs that their share prices could only go up.
Furthermore, their companies’ high stock valuations had allowed them to take over their competitors, thus limiting competition – just as companies such as Google and Meta (Facebook) have since used their highly valued shares to purchase key assets and potential rivals including YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and DeepMind. History suggests this is always bad for the economy in the long run.
With the business and financial worlds now ever more closely linked, not only has the frequency of financial crises increased in the last half-century but each crisis has become more interconnected. The 2008 global financial crisis showed how dangerous this can be: a global banking crisis triggered stock market falls, collapses in the value of weak currencies, a debt crisis in developing countries – and, ultimately, a global recession that has taken years to recover from.
The IMF’s latest financial stability report summarized the situation in worrying terms, highlighting “elevated” stability risks as a result of “stretched asset valuations, growing pressure in sovereign bond markets, and the increasing role of non-bank financial institutions. Despite its deep liquidity, the global foreign exchange market remains vulnerable to macrofinancial uncertainty.”
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I believe we may be entering a new era of sustained financial chaos during which the seeds sown by the death of globalization – and Trump’s response to it – finally shatter the world economic and political order established after the second world war.
Trump’s high and erratically applied tariffs – aimed most strongly at China – have already made it difficult to reconfigure global supply chains. Even more worrying could be the struggle over the control of key strategic raw materials like the rare earth minerals needed for hi-tech industries, with China banning their export and the US threatening 100% tariffs in return (as well as hoping to take over Greenland, with its as-yet-untapped supply of some of these minerals).
This conflict over rare earths, vital for the computer chips needed for AI, could also threaten the market value of high-flying tech stocks such as Nvidia, the first company to exceed US$4 trillion in value. [Asia Times editors’ update: Peter Thiel is reported to have unloaded his Nvidia shares in the third quarter, as Softbank earlier had been reported to have done with its gigantic holdings in the company.]
The battle for control of critical raw materials could escalate. There is a danger that in some cases, trade wars might become real wars – just as they did in the former era of mercantilism. Many recent and current regional conflicts, from the first Iraq war aimed at the conquest of the oilfields of Kuwait, to the civil war in Sudan over control of the country’s goldmines, are rooted in economic conflicts.
The history of globalization over the past four centuries suggests that the presence of a global superpower – for all its negative sides – has brought a degree of economic stability in an uncertain world.
In contrast, a key lesson of history is that a return to policies of mercantilism – with countries struggling to seize key natural resources for themselves and deny them to their rivals – is most likely a recipe for perpetual conflict. But this time around, in a world full of 10,000 nuclear weapons, miscalculations could be fatal if trust and certainty are undermined.
The challenges ahead are immense – and the weakness of international institutions, the limited visions of most governments and the alienation of many of their citizens are not optimistic signs.
This is the second in a two-part series. In case you missed it, read part one here.
Steve Schifferes is an honorary research fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George’s, University of London.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Pilgrim bus crash near Saudi Arabia’s Medina kills 45: Indian police
One of the deadliest crashes in the Gulf kingdom in recent memory occurred in a bus full of Indian pilgrims, according to Indian police on Monday ( Nov 17 ), killing at least 45 people near Medina, Saudi Arabia’s holy city.
The horrible bus accident involving Hindu pilgrims in Saudi Arabia is greatly unsettling, according to VC Sajjanar, the authorities commissioner for the city of Hyderabad, where many of the Indians are said to have reportedly emigrated.
At the time of the event, 46 passengers were in the bus, according to preliminary information, and achingly, only one person managed to survive, he said.
Royal authorities have not determined the death toll of the collision.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in a post on social media earlier that day that the Indian Embassy was working with Saudi authorities on the ground and that he was condolenced before.
” Deeply depressed by the Medina crash involving American citizens. My views are with the grieving people, the prime minister wrote on X.
” I pray for the quick healing of all those hurt. Our consul in Jeddah and our embassy in Riyadh are offering all of their help,” he continued.
According to a 2023 UN speech, the country still had a higher rate of road fatalities compared to other high-income nations, which is one of the biggest causes of injuries and fatalities in Saudi Arabia.
During the hajj, when the buses can be obstructing traffic and cause endless traffic jams, worshippers have often found themselves traveling through Saudi Arabia’s holy sites dangerous.
Millions of people also travel to Saudi Arabia for the haj pilgrimage, which occurs during the time of the Hajj.
After a motion on a gate in March 2023, a vehicle carrying travellers to the sacred city of Mecca caught fire, killing 20 people and injuring more than 20 another.
And in October 2019, a vehicle collided with another large aircraft near Medina, killing 35 foreigners and injuring four people.
Journeys are a crucial part of Saudi Arabia’s expanding tourism industry, which officials hope will help expand the country’s economy away from fossil fuels.
More than two million American citizens have long been a key part in the Gulf kingdom’s labor industry, helping to build many of the nation’s megaprojects and sending billions of dollars in payments back home each month.
India and Saudi Arabia have had a fruitful partnership for years.
Saudi Arabia is India’s third-largest distributor, according to the American foreign ministry, and its rapidly expanding economy depends heavily on petroleum imports.
Malaysian linked to Cambodia-based syndicate to be charged after deportation and handover to SPF
A Malaysian man who is connected to a Phnom Penh-based scam syndicate will be charged in court on Tuesday ( Nov 18 ), after being detained by the Cambodian National Police ( CNP ) in the country’s capital and deported to Malaysia on Monday.
Bernard Goh Yie Shen, 24, was detained by the Royal Malaysia Police ( RMP), according to the Singapore Police Force ( SPF), and later turned himself in to SPF on the same day.
Goh is reportedly a member of a group of 27 Singaporeans and seven Malaysians who are wanted by the officers for their part in government national imitation schemes that target and defraud Singaporeans.
Wayne Soh You Chen, 27, and Brian Sie Eng Fa, 32, both from Singapore, were charged with being clients in the same gang on Monday. Both gentlemen were deported from Cambodia and Thailand to Singapore and taken into custody the day before their appearance.
At least 438 reported scam cases allegedly involving losses of at least US$$ 41 million ( US$$ 31.6 million ) are being handled by the organized criminal group.
SPF and CNP conducted a joint operation on September 9 that caused the party to be disengaged. SPF had previously issued restriction of waste orders and seize assets related to the legal organization as part of ongoing investigations.
Goh will face a charge in court on Tuesday for assisting a local-linked organized crime group’s improper mission under the Organised Crime Act.
He faces a maximum fine of S$ 100 000 or both if found innocent.  ,
SPF thanked CNP and RMP for their unwavering support, adding that they will proceed to cooperate attentively with foreign law enforcement to catch those who congregate in Singapore.
Thirty-one defendants are still at large. People with information on whereabouts does visit SPF at 1800 255 0000, according to police. Callers from other countries may reach SPF by dialing 65 6255 0000, and SPF you also receive suspect information online.
SPF will keep all of its data strictly private.
Thai court orders ex-PM Thaksin to pay $500 mn tax bill: reports
” FOLLO W THE ORDER”
The Supreme Court overturned an appeals court’s decision on Monday in the revenue case, forcing Thaksin to comply with the Revenue Department’s request to pay taxes, according to court official Suriyan Hongvilai.
Suriyan provided neither the certain amount to be paid nor the judge’s justification for its decision.
According to several Thai media outlets, the court ordered Thaksin to spend$ 540 million in taxes and charges.
Tax officials in 2017 had slapped the former prime minister with a$ 500 million costs, resurrecting a row between the nationalist politician and the defense establishment at the heart of the nation’s political rift.
The issue centered on whether Thaksin should have been responsible for paying taxes on the 2006 sales of Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings in Singapore.
Rallies DISTRIBUTED IN A Revolution
The opposition to his government’s federal benefited from the package, which earned the Shinawatra relatives$ 1.9 billion in revenue.
The revolution that removed him from office and sparked years of crippling political bickering between his supporters and opponents culminated in rallies.
The Shinawatra community has been a vital foe for the pro-military, pro-royalty elite of Thailand for decades because they view their nationalist political philosophy as a threat to the social order that has always existed.
However, the Shinawatra kingdom has experienced a number of legal and political failures, including the court’s order to remove Paetongtarn from the position of prime minister in August due to an ethics violation.
Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina sentenced to death over student protests
Arunoday Mukharji and Mir Sabbir,in Dhaka, and
Anbarasan Ethirajan and Ewan Somerville
Bangladesh’s former prime minister has been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity over her crackdown on student-led protests which led to her ousting.
Sheikh Hasina was found guilty of allowing lethal force to be used against protesters, 1,400 of whom died during the unrest last year.
Hasina, 78, was tried in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh, having been exiled in India since she was forced from power in July 2024.
Prosecutors accused her of being behind hundreds of killings during the protests. Hasina has denied all charges, calling the trial “biased and politically motivated”.
The months-long tribunal in the ICT, Bangladesh’s domestic war crimes court, was widely expected to find her guilty.
But the verdict marks a pivotal moment for the nation, vindicating protests that found their roots in anger over years of repression under her rule.
It also poses a diplomatic challenge for India and Bangladesh. Dhaka has formally requested Hasina’s extradition but so far Delhi has shown no willingness to comply – so her death sentence is unlikely to be carried out.
Hasina had governed Bangladesh for 15 years, overseeing economic progress, but increasingly attempting to silence opposition, with politically-motivated arrests, disappearances and extra-judicial killings.
The protests saw Hasina forced to flee and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus installed as leader of an interim government.
Reacting to the verdict on Monday in a five-page statement, Hasina said the death penalty was the interim government’s way of “nullifying [her party] the Awami League as a political force” and that she was proud of her government’s record on human rights.
“I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where the evidence can be weighed and tested fairly.”
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AFP via Getty ImagesBangladesh’s interim government called the sentence “historic” and “profound” but called for calm, adding that emotions could run high over the outcome.
Meanwhile, Judge Golam Mortuza Mozumder said Hasina was found guilty on three counts including incitement, ordering killings and failing to prevent atrocities during the uprising.
“We have decided to inflict her with only one sentence – that is, sentence of death,” he said.
The student-led uprising last year started with demands to abolish government job quotas but morphed into a wider anti-government movement.
UN human rights investigators said in a report in February that the approximately 1,400 deaths could amount to “crimes against humanity”.
The report documented the shooting at point-blank range of some protesters, the deliberate maiming of others, arbitrary arrests and torture.
Reacting to Hasina’s sentence, the UN Human Rights Office said this was an “important moment for victims” – but it regretted the “imposition of the death penalty, which we oppose in all circumstances”.
Leaked audio of one of Hasina’s phone calls verified by BBC Eye earlier this year suggested she had authorised the use of “lethal weapons” in July 2024. The audio was played in court during the trial.
Ahead of the verdict, the capital, Dhaka, where the tribunal took place, was under tightened security, with many of Hasina’s critics staging a rally and cheering as the judgement was read.
The city has seen a recent spike in unrest, with dozens of bombs exploded and buses set on fire in the days leading up to the verdict.
At least one bomb explosion was reported in Dhaka on Monday morning, with no casualties reported, local police official Jisanul Haque told the BBC.
Family members of those killed during the protests earlier told the BBC they wanted Hasina to be punished severely.
Ramjan Ali, whose brother was shot dead in July 2024, said he wanted “exemplary punishment” for Hasina and others who have “committed acts of vengeance and abused their power”.
Lucky Akther, whose husband was killed near Dhaka in August 2024, said she wanted Hasina’s sentence to be “carried out before the election”.
“Only then the families of those killed [in the protests] will find peace in their hearts.”
Since Hasina’s ousting, an interim government led by economist Muhammad Yunus has taken charge. A parliamentary election is scheduled for February 2026.
However, the Awami League, Hasina’s political party, was banned by Bangladesh’s interim government in May.
Hasina warned last month that if the party’s candidates were banned from standing in the upcoming election, millions would boycott the vote.
Hasina’s state-appointed lawyer Mohammad Amir Hossain said he was “sad [and wishes] the verdict had been different”.
“I even cannot appeal because my clients are absent; that’s why I am sad,” he added.
Last week, Hasina’s lawyers said they had filed an urgent appeal to the UN, raising serious fair trial and due process issues at the ICT. She says she has “repeatedly challenged” the interim government to bring its charges to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Lightrocket/Getty ImagesHasina was tried alongside her former home minister and police chief.
While the sentence offers some closure to families of killed in the protests, it may do little to soothe the country’s political divisions.
“The anger against Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League has not subsided,” Shireen Huq, a Dhaka-based rights activists told the BBC. “Neither she nor the party has apologised or shown any remorse for the killings of hundreds of people.”
She said “it makes it difficult for the party to be accepted by a majority of people in this country”.
Ms Huq, who is against capital punishment, added that the punishment was not closure for the families of those killed and injured.
“We work with several people who lost their limbs forever, they are amputees now, due to the crackdown. They will never be able to forgive her.”
David Bergman, a journalist and a long-time Bangladesh watcher, said the “very nature of the conviction could make it even more difficult” for Awami League to become a normal feature of Bangladeshi politics again.
This may change if “there is some kind of apology and a distancing from Sheikh Hasina and the old leadership”, he said.
Man jailed for running donation scam that duped thousands of victims out of more than S$106,000
SINGAPORE: A man was sentenced to 46 months ‘ jail on Monday ( Nov 17 ) for running a scam operation that collected over S$ 106, 000 ( US$ 81, 300 ) in fraudulent donations from more than 12, 600 victims.
Lim Kah Kheng, 42, was convicted of four counts of lying on Monday. Another eight cheating costs and three counts of robbery in housing were taken into consideration for the purpose of punishment.
In a joint media release with the Office of the Commissioner of Charities on Monday, authorities said they received a statement on Jun 24, 2024 in relation to a person who was going about knocking on doors and soliciting donations in the vicinity of Bedok North Street 3.  ,
Further studies showed that Lim had orchestrated a payment fraud by making false team moves and false documents, between Jan 28, 2020 and the day the officers report was made.  ,
” Under the guise of social entrepreneurship and generous work, he recruited and misled seven people into believing they were participating in genuine generous actions, and finally deceived members of the public into making gifts under false pretences”, said the government.
Officers established the man’s identity and arrested him on the same day of receiving the report, with the police and Office of the Commissioner of Charities noting that the scam operation had targeted residential areas.
Members of the public should remain vigilant against such donation scams, including being discerning when approached by fundraisers, said the authorities.
Suspicious charitable fund-raising activities should be reported to the Office of the Commissioner of Charities and a police report should also be filed immediately if a fraud or a scam is suspected.
Those convicted of cheating can be fined and jailed for up to 10 years.
Delhi car bombing accused appears in Indian court, another suspect held
” Ready FOR THE FUTURE” The blast occurred close to a busy rail station in Old Delhi, where the prime minister delivers his yearly Independence Day target. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described the attack as a” conspiracy” and has pledged to prosecute those responsible for the crimes. Nabi wasContinue Reading
PUB to add 650 sensors, working to put alerts on Google Maps to bolster Singapore’s flood readiness
By the end of 2028, Singapore will have installed about 650 water level sensors, adding to the more than 1, 000 sensors already in drains and canals to improve the nation’s flood management capabilities, according to PUB on Monday ( Nov 17 ).
The national water firm of Singapore is collaborating with Google to add flood alerts to its Google Maps system, giving users and commuters access to flood information to help them navigate through stormy days. Grab’s mobile app and the Land Transport Authority’s Electronic Road Pricing ( ERP ) on-board units already have flood alerts available.
In preparation for the Northeast rain time, which is expected to begin in November and last until March 2026, PUB announced these approaching measures on Monday.
PUB is strengthening Singapore’s flood resilience, according to the organization,” through increased monitoring, real-time alerts, and neighborhood wedding.”
Angela Koh, vice president of PUB’s disaster resilience cluster, noted that flood checking and response is a crucial component of the organization’s efforts to reduce the impact of flooding.
PUB uses data from more than 500 closed-circuit broadcast cameras, weather gauges, climate radars, and disaster response vehicles to improve its ability to forecast rainfall and flood levels.
The expanded channel of water levels sensors will enable faster diagnosis of rising water levels and quicker deployment of rapid response teams with monitoring coverage of about one sensor per kilometer of big waterways and canals.  ,
These cameras also aid in post-flood investigations and provide us with information on how effective our drains infrastructure is, according to Ms Koh.
They will supply the information into PUB’s Smart Drainage Grid, which analyzes rain gauge sensor and rainfall data to identify overflow causes and make recommendations for improvement measures.
Cafe also provided an update on efforts to lessen the effects of inundation in Yishun and Bukit Timah.
A 900m bend of the major Bukit Timah Canal, which starts from Rifle Range Road to Jalan Kampong Chantek, is being worked on to increase its potential for water by 30 %.
This was supposed to be finished in 2024, but it was postponed until 2026 to coincide with the construction of a clean hall.  ,
The remaining river exercises are being gradually upgraded, according to PUB, along with expanding the roads drains along Prince’s Road, King’s Road, and Queen’s Road.
Following a flash flood along Yishun Avenue 7<a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/pub-flash-flood-apr-13-yishun-punggol-5062926″> in April, flood prevention measures have also been put in place.
PUB claimed that a small tunnel along Yishun Avenue 7 and a river roads drain leading to Yishun Street 22 created a barrier that caused waters to back up and storm the path.
Since then, reservoirs have been installed along Yishun Street 22 and Yishun Avenue 7, which are barriers that alter water stream and speed.
Restaurant is already tracking its effectiveness while modifying railings along Yishun Avenue 7 into flood obstacles.
China’s digital finance pivot: from clearing ground to rebuilding – Asia Times
China’s central bank has just drawn the contours of its digital-finance strategy for the next five years. The sequencing is unmistakable: clear the ground first, then rebuild the system. The rhythm has been unusually coherent.
On October 27 at the Financial Street Forum in Beijing, People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng delivered the first decisive cut – an unambiguous “market clean-up.” Days later, at Hong Kong FinTech Week and the International Financial Leaders Investment Summit (November 3–4), PBOC Vice Governor Lu Lei supplied the institutional architecture. Read together, the message is not regulatory tightening. It is a structural reset.
Pan’s remarks in Beijing were unusually direct. The PBOC, he said, will continue working with law-enforcement bodies to “crack down on domestic virtual-currency operations and speculation,” while “closely monitoring the development of overseas stablecoins and dynamically assessing their potential impact on financial stability.”
This was not about shutting doors. It was about drawing the baseline. More importantly, it signaled something deeper: Under China’s policy logic, stablecoins are not part of the long-term design.
The reason is straightforward.
Stablecoins were created as a stopgap – private instruments designed to provide a “stable unit of account” in a market dominated by highly volatile crypto assets. Most rely on reserves in dollars, commercial paper or short-term treasuries.
But the structural risks are inherent: opaque backing, unverifiable redemption capacity, cross-border anti-money-laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance blind spots and governance asymmetry.
Stablecoins were never the end state. They were a workaround – a bridge used only when sovereign digital currencies did not exist.
Given the current situation, it is very likely that China hopes to launch a digital currency ahead of the United States, without adopting or relying on a stablecoin mechanism. The reasoning is straightforward: dollar stablecoins are already strong, and the US can effectively control them.
The stablecoins US Dollar Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT) have essentially become the United States’ shadow digital dollars. If China were to copy the stablecoin model and issue a Chinese yuan (CNY) stablecoin, it might end up wasting time, unable to compete with dollar stablecoins or capture meaningful market share – and could even further strengthen the momentum of dollar stablecoins.
The United States, for its part, is not in a hurry to roll out a digital dollar precisely because dollar stablecoins have already become a highly useful instrument. From China’s perspective, moving directly to a full-fledged digital yuan may offer a more advantageous development path.
China does not need that bridge. When a country moves directly from physical money to a central-bank digital currency – and has the ability to build the full stack of payments, settlement, identity, compliance and cross-border coordination – the detour through private stablecoins becomes redundant.
China is not suppressing stablecoins; it simply has no need for them. No private token is required to substitute for state money. No systemic trial-and-error is needed to discover which models fail. In a sovereign-led stack, stablecoins fade naturally into the margins.
The real pivot came from Lu Lei’s speech in Hong Kong. He described a “dual-platform, dual-engine” system: the one anchored in the digital yuan and the other in trusted on-chain assets. The former covers payments, settlement, financial inclusion and account infrastructure; the latter supports asset tokenization, trading, real-world-asset integration and the on-chain migration of production factors.
The two do not compete; they complement. This is the first time the PBOC has used institutional language – not technical jargon – to articulate its Web3 vision. The implication is clear: China’s future Web3 will not be a patchwork of spontaneous experiments. It will be national infrastructure.
Pan’s Beijing speech added the institutional scaffolding for the digital yuan. The PBOC will “further optimize the digital-renminbi management framework, clarify its position in the monetary hierarchy and support more commercial banks becoming operating institutions.”
Equally important is the completion of the “dual-centre CBDC layout”: Shanghai now hosts the Digital Yuan International Operations Center, focused on cross-border cooperation and application scenarios; Beijing houses the Digital Yuan Operations Management Center, responsible for system development, operation and maintenance. As Pan put it, “Shanghai leads internationalization; Beijing anchors the foundational system.” It is a statement not only of function but of sovereignty.
On cross-border finance, Lu was even more explicit. The multi-central-bank mBridge platform, he argued, is not a technology showcase but a shift in rules, enabling “direct, instant and final” settlement between jurisdictions without routing through legacy centralized networks. For the first time, regional settlement could move from path dependence to institutional autonomy. Asia’s financial plumbing may well pivot from this point onward.
Seen through this lens, the so-called “rectification” acquires its proper context. It is not contraction but reconstruction; not hindering innovation but clearing space for institutionalised innovation. When the payment layer, asset layer and cross-border layer are all being upgraded simultaneously, the system needs a clean foundation, not ambiguous corners. The sequencing – risk first, platforms second, architecture last – is precisely how China traditionally builds financial governance.
Taken together, these signals converge into a single conclusion: China’s digital-finance architecture is taking shape. The shift is from stock management to incremental construction, from passive adaptation to proactive design, from fragmented exploration to system-level integration.
For industry, the question is no longer “What is allowed?” but “How can we build in a compliant way that plugs into national-level infrastructure?” The next wave of opportunity is not in regulatory grey zones or arbitrage. It is in the new structural positions being carved out – payments, identity, settlement, real world asset (RWA) tokenization, supply-chain finance and cross-border interoperability.
For individuals, the short-term experience is adjustment. The long-term gain is a digital-financial environment that is safer, more transparent and more structurally stable. New asset forms, new applications and new financial behaviors will grow naturally out of this architecture.
The conclusion, therefore, is disarmingly simple: This is not retreat. It is a change of lanes. Not a closure, but a reordering.
And the road ahead for Web3 will be brighter, wider, and far more regulated.
Jeffrey Sze is the chairman of Habsburg Asia and the general partner of Archduke United LPF and Asia Empower LPF, specializing in high-end art transactions and real world asset tokenization operations. In 2017, he secured a cryptocurrency exchange license in Switzerland.