SILKYARA, India: Indian rescuers drilled through rocks and debris on Tuesday (Nov 28) to reach 41 workers trapped for 17 days in a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas, and were set to pull them out one by one to safety, officials said. The men, low-wage workers from India’s poorest states, haveContinue Reading
AMBITIOUS PROJECT Dozens of rescue workers with ropes, ladders and stretchers entered the tunnel and 41 ambulances were lined up outside to take the 41 men to a hospital about 30km away. Helicopters were on standby there to fly workers to a larger hospital in the city of Rishikesh inContinue Reading
Amazon, Honeywell, Intel and several other top-tier American companies are slated to participate in the first China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing this week. The event is seen by some as an early test of the stabilization of US-China relations announced by presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping two weeks ago in San Francisco. The expo, held in conjunction with the Global Supply Chain Innovation and Development Forum, has attracted 515 enterprises and institutions, about a quarter of them from countries outside of China. Half of those have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Only 5% are from the US but they include high fliers such as Apple, Cargill, ExxonMobil, FedEx, GE HealthCare, Google, Starbucks, Tesla and Qualcomm.Continue Reading
PUBLISHED : 28 Nov 2023 at 15:48
A school deputy director in Bangkok has been accused of sexually abusing her 12-year-old student and resorting to threats of exposing explicit photos and videos if the girl did not comply.
The student, escorted by popular social media activist Guntouch Pongpaiboonwet, alias Gun Jompalang, filed a complaint at Nong Chok police station on Tuesday.
The girl, enrolled in Grade 6 at a school in Bangkok’s Nong Chok district, also presented chat messages between her and the accused as evidence to Pol Capt Chaiwat Charasmethawit, deputy investigation chief.
Mr Guntouch said the girl’s mother and elder sister sought his help upon discovering that the 38-year-old former teacher, now a deputy director at another school, had allegedly sexually abused her.
The student had allegedly been lured into sending her naked photos to her teacher, who had also allegedly committed sexual abuse.
The teacher had threatened to send the student’s naked photos to the media if the victim did not comply with her demands, according to the activist.
“In my view, individuals engaging in such behaviour do not deserve to be teachers. Despite being married and living with her husband, she still lured the student into a sexual act at a petrol station,” said Mr Guntouch. “It’s evil and immoral act.”
Having previously handled sexual offense cases involving male perpetrators, Mr Guntouch expressed his concern about a female teacher being the offender this time. The accused teacher also claimed connections with influential figures and politicians, leaving the girl with no one to turn to.
Mr Guntouch said he would take the girl to petition an educational service area office in Bangkok against the accused, who had been promoted to the position of deputy director at another secondary school.
He said there must be an investigation to find out whether the accused had committed similar offences against other students.
The victim’s elder sister said her sister had initially sought the teacher’s guidance during Grade 5 and grew closer to her during the second term of Grade 6. The student believed whatever the teacher told her, the sister said.
The alleged sexual abuse came to light when the victim informed her family about the teacher’s threats to disseminate her explicit photos and videos when she asked for freedom to start a new life.
The teacher had also warned her against befriending others out of jealousy.
Police said they would call a psychologist and concerned agencies to jointly question the girl about the matter before considering a warrant to summon the accused to acknowledge her charges.
“One belligerent party, the United States, is threatening us with a nuclear weapon,” he said. “It is a legitimate right for the DPRK as another belligerent party to develop, test, manufacture and possess weapons systems equivalent to those that the United States possesses or is developing.” He mocked US chargesContinue Reading
PUBLISHED : 28 Nov 2023 at 15:03
The cabinet on Tuesday approved a draft interior ministerial regulation to extend the operating hours of entertainment venues in key tourist destinations, including Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chon Buri, Koh Samui and Phuket, allowing them to operate until 4am.
Traisuree Taisaranakul, spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, said the ministry would implement the measure aimed at stimulating tourism in the country.
The extended hours will also apply to entertainment places within hotels registered by the hotel law.
For standalone entertainment venues in other destinations, operators are advised to wait for relevant regulations in their respective provinces, and the Interior Ministry will issue specific criteria for them, Ms Traisuree said.
Initially, the Interior Ministry planned to implement the new rule on Dec 15.
SINGAPORE: The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said on Tuesday (Nov 28) that bus service 167 will be retained, but will operate at 30-minute intervals, just days after announcing that the service would be cut due to falling ridership.
LTA had said on Nov 17 that several other bus services would also be changed, including shortening the routes of services 162 and 75.
In a statement on Tuesday, the LTA said that it “looked at the availability of alternative services” when reviewing the bus services and ensured that “most affected commuters” would still have both MRT and bus options after the adjustment.
“Nonetheless, we understand that some commuters may need more time to adjust, and to try out the new travel routes. This is especially so for Service 167, where the change is more extensive.
“Hence, LTA will retain Service 167 for now and operate it at 30-minute intervals throughout the day,” LTA said.
This will be implemented from Dec 17, alongside the other adjustments that had been initially scheduled to start on Dec 10.
“We seek commuters’ understanding that it is not always possible to preserve direct bus connections for every journey,” said LTA, adding: “This is not the best use of our limited resources.”
“As new transport options such as the TEL and other MRT lines become available, and when Singaporeans move into new estates and workplaces, new bus services will be required for these new routes.”
The authority said that it will continue to review its bus network and reallocate their resources “as required”.
Local game developer The Gentlebros said making any new content or expanding to other markets will require more manpower, which it cannot afford.
The video game studio, which started in 2015, is behind Cat Quest, an award-winning role-playing game where a player assumes the role of a cat and goes on a quest to save the world.
Mr Desmond Wong, CEO of The Gentlebros, said “the video game industry as a whole is a pretty risky business”.
“Most developers are probably one or two video games away from closing if a game isn’t successful,” he added.
“So if you don’t have a hit, if you don’t have success, usually it’s pretty hard to continue running that business.”
In Singapore, it is also tough operating with the rising cost of living and the high cost of hiring staff,” said Mr Wong.
“We also have a lot of bigger companies… that also are able to pay really well for staff and employees, and that kind of jacks up the cost to hire in Singapore, which makes it doubly hard to grow and expand.”
Mr Wong said smaller studios like his try to offer workers a greater sense of involvement in their products and competitive salaries to make it “a more attractive place to work”.
Another game maker, Mighty Bear Games, is facing a similar problem.
Since January this year, the firm has been looking to fill positions for engineers, artists and project managers with more than three years of experience.
However, hiring talent is difficult, as those with the necessary skill sets would rather go to multinational companies (MNCs), said the game developer.
“The Singapore government has a good track record of attracting MNCs to Singapore and they provide them support as well. This makes it very difficult for local studios to compete, because they don’t get access to the same kind of support,” said Mr Fadzuli Said, co-founder and chief technology officer at Mighty Bear Games.
“On top of that, MNCs prefer to hire experienced talents and forgo training the junior talent pool. This extracts a lot of value from the ecosystem and puts a lot of pressure on smaller companies to do the training.”
There is a need for homegrown studios to be better supported for Singapore to have “a resilient and sustainable gaming economy”, he said.
“My main concern is the impact on the gaming ecosystem if major MNCs were to decide to withdraw from Singapore.”
PUBLISHED : 28 Nov 2023 at 14:20
The cabinet on Tuesday transferred the chief of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to the position of deputy permanent secretary for justice, citing an ongoing investigation into pork smuggling by the organisation.
The transfer order came one day after Pol Maj Suriya Singhakamol, the now former DSI director-general, led officials in a search of the headquarters of cash-and-carry wholesaler Makro in Suan Luang district, Bangkok.
Upon learning of his transfer, Pol Maj Suriya on Tuesday posted a message on the department’s Facebook page, saying it was a typical move for civil servants and he had been prepared for this development since his first day in the top position at the department.
“I do not regret it because I have done my best. I am honoured to work with everyone,” reads the message.
The DSI is investigating active pork smuggling in Thailand following the discovery of a large amount of smuggled pork in 161 refrigerated shipping containers at Laem Chabang Port in Chon Buri province in July. The influx of smuggled pork at relatively lower prices reportedly led to a decline in local pork prices, negatively impacting local farmers and national food security.
Prime Minister and Finance Minister Srettha Thavisin recently urged the DSI to speed up its investigation into pork smuggling and apprehend those responsible.
Pol Maj Suriya earlier said the DSI suspected the involvement of many government officials in the illicit business.
On Monday, the DSI arrested two pork importers allegedly involved in smuggling and searching the Makro headquarters. The move was prompted by suspicions that the importers were supplying the listed wholesale company with smuggled pork and pigs’ internal organs.
Makro’s chief corporate communication officer Siriporn Dechasingha said on Monday that the company procured all pork from registered local sources and imported internal organs of pigs from registered traders to meet the country’s demand.
The company had ceased procuring pig liver from the suspects earlier this year and other internal organs from them in the middle of last year due to substandard supplies, she said.
Makro had also bought fish and seafood from the same longstanding suppliers, she added.
The wholesaler is owned by the Chearavanont family that controls the agribusiness conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP).
In The Netherlands, a formerly fringe far-right party wins more seats in the Dutch general election than any other political group.
In Dublin, a knife attack outside a school triggers rioting and looting by right-wing thugs.
In the UK, the latest YouGov poll reveals rising support for the right-wing Reform Party.
The common theme in each of these recent news stories is immigration, a topic that has risen to the top of political agendas across Europe, threatening to transform liberal democracies into illiberal bastions of intolerance.
Make no mistake. This isn’t about “illegal” immigration. It is about racism, pure and simple.
For instance, it suits the UK government to make an issue out of “stopping the boats” crossing the English Channel. But the numbers involved are tiny compared with the number of migrants coming to the UK legally, to work as doctors, nurses and care-home assistants, or to study as students.
And even those students are coming under fire.
The UK is seeing a record number of people coming from overseas to study. Worth millions of pounds to universities, which charge foreign students far higher fees than their British counterparts, they contribute significantly to the nation’s gross domestic product.
Some stay on in the country after completing their course. If they do, it’s because they’ve got a job and are paying taxes to the Treasury.
Regardless, right-wing politicians are now demanding that such students should not be allowed to bring family to live with them.
Europe is walking, eyes tight shut, into a new dark age that makes a mockery of the 70-million-plus lives lost during the Second World War in the effort to rid the world of the cancerous, supremacist ideology of the Nazis.
A fundamental misunderstanding underpins Europe’s rising tide of immigration hysteria: Europe, with birth rates declining, needs immigration.
In the UK in particular, migrants form a large part of the workforce, including doctors and nurses, but also carry out many of the low-paid jobs.
But at the same time, right-wing politicians are peddling the false trope that migrants are taking “our” jobs and housing, clogging up “our” health system and – most sinister of all – “changing the shape of our country before our very eyes.”
That last incendiary quote comes from Richard Tice, a wealthy British property developer who founded the UK Brexit Party and is now the leader of its successor Reform Party, which says Britain is “broken” and “needs net zero immigration.”
The Conservative government, he said, had “totally betrayed” the British people because immigration to the UK was at a record high.
It is, but only because if it weren’t, Britain’s economy would collapse.
Regardless, traditional, more reasonable political parties across Europe are in a bind. If they ignore the rising tide of racist hysteria, they will be swept away, and so they are pandering to the mob.
In the UK, the Conservative government is fragmenting, torn apart by the competing narratives of the beleaguered party’s few remaining centrist members of Parliament, and the extremists like the recently fired home secretary Suella Braverman, architect of the bizarre policy of dispatching boat people to Rwanda.
In The Netherlands, a four-party coalition government collapsed in July after failing to reach agreement over measures to control the flow of migrants. Into the moral vacuum stepped radical right-winger Geert Wilders, a preposterous man who rants about the “tsunami of asylum and immigration” and who has pledged to “ban” the Koran, close the country’s borders and deliver “Nexit,” a Dutch version of Brexit.
On one level, this growing distaste for non-European foreigners is hilarious, given that it is a direct consequence of the colonialism that European states such as Britain and Holland imposed on the world for centuries.
But such truths cast no shadows on the fantasy landscapes occupied by the likes of Wilders.
The advantages of cultural diversity are obvious, and too numerous to list, and in choosing to present multiculturalism as a threat rather than an asset, right-wing politicians expose themselves for what they are – racists.
In Ireland last week, anti-migrant mobs gathered after an incident in which five people, including a five-year-old girl, were stabbed outside a primary school in Dublin.
In the words of the police, “hateful assumptions” that the attacker was a foreign national spread quickly, and mobs took to the streets, expressing their disdain for foreigners by, oddly, vandalizing and looting Irish shops.
Ironically, the man who risked his own life to save the wounded victims was himself a migrant, a fast-food courier and a father of two, originally from Brazil.
Unfortunately, Europe is increasingly under the spell of those who would highlight our differences rather than our similarities, in a cynical bid to seize power.
The roots of all the disruptions in the Middle East and North Africa that have, to a significant extent, contributed to Europe’s migrant problems can be traced to European intervention in the region dating back to the First World War.
The challenge now for Europe’s moderate, mainstream politicians is to recognize and own this history, to hold the line of decency and to combat, rather than pander to, the false narratives of the extremists.
So far, however, none has appeared capable of rising to this challenge, and Europe is slipping inexorably into a moral dark age.
This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.
Jonathan Gornall is a British journalist, formerly with The Times, who has lived and worked in the Middle East and is now based in the UK.