Samsung Engineering said on August 16 that it won two petrochemical power generation projects worth 550 billion won jointly with PTT Public Company Ltd., a Thai state-run oil company. This has been less than a week since the Korean company announced a large-scale oil refinery building project in Oman worth more than 1 trillion won. The project calls for building a petrochemical plant and an electricity generation plant in Rayong, Thailand's largest industrial city 150 kilometers southeast of ...

This year's tourism balance of payments is estimated to surpass US$15 billion. This is up more than 40 percent of $10.8 billion recorded in 2007 in the wake of the global financial crisis. According to the Bank of Korea, the tourism balance of payments in the month of June this year was a deficit of $1.39 billion. The cumulative deficit for the first six months of the year has been $7.74 billion, the second all-time highest after the second half of 2007. Last year, the tourism spending by K...

The youth unemployment rate has hit a record-high level in August since the Asian financial crisis. As for the number of net job increase, it fell to a low of 54 months. Even though the government is doing everything it can to create jobs, jobs-related figures won't budge. According to a report "August 2017 Employment Trend" published by the National Statistical Office on September 13, the jobless ratio of those aged between 15 and 29 was 9.4 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from a year ago. ...

The approval rating of the Moon Jae-in government has hit a low of 67.1 percent largely due to North Korea nuclear issues. The rating has fallen for three consecutive weeks. As for the approval rating of the ruling Minjoo Party has declined for four weeks in a row to 49.3 percent. Pollster Realmeter said on September 18 that a survey commissioned by CBS-TV revealed that the ratio of those who thought positively about the way the current government has performed was 67.1 percent, down by 2.0 p...

Documents had detailed advice from nation's top disease control experts for reopening communities during coronavirus pandemic

  Throughout 2019, we saw a growing promulgation of guidance, consultations and new laws across the world. In light of such a regulatory landscape beginning to form, there is growing debate as to whether or not Artificial Intelligence (“A...

In response to the surge of harmful and illegal content being spread online, the Government currently deliberates legislation for 2020 to establish a regulatory framework that will attempt to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be on...

On 25 October 2017, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (“HKMA”) published the Whitepaper 2.0 (“Whitepaper 2.0”) on Distributed Ledger Technology (“DLT”). This Whitepaper 2.0 provides practical advice on over 20 gove...

WASHINGTON: Three aides working for US President , vice-president , and first daughter have tested positive for the novel this week. This has brought the pandemic to within a degree of the center of power in the US and made the White House an unexpected emerging hotspot even as large parts of America is now re-opening for business to very light footfall. All three principals and their spouses are reported to have tested negative for the virus. The White House has now updated its protocol to include daily tests for everyone entering the complex, though Trump himself is skeptical of the process and has disdained masking and social distancing guidelines outlined by his own administration. The...

White House employees, and reporters, watch President Donald Trump, aboard Marine One, depart the White House in Washington, Tuesday, May 5, 2020. (Al Drago/The New York Times) WASHINGTON — In his eagerness to reopen the country, President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Americans that it would be safe to go back to the workplace. But the past few days have demonstrated that even his own workplace may not be safe from the coronavirus. Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary tested positive for the virus Friday, forcing a delay in the departure of Air Force Two while a half-dozen other members of his staff were taken off the plane for further testing. That came only a day...

The coronavirus is surfacing deep inside the White House ......

The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said his agency's guidance for reopening the country was in "draft form" and not ready to be released in the midst of reports that top administration officials decided to shelve the CDC’s recommendations. “The re-opening guidance shared prematurely was in draft form and had not been vetted through the interagency review process," CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a statement circulated by the...

Milan's mayor has condemned "shameful" crowds heading to a popular area of the city during Italy’s relaxed lockdown. Images...

Gainesville: The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press. The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval. The trove of emails shows the nation’s top public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending weeks working on guidance to help the country deal with a public health emergency, only to see their...

The US President appeared puzzled that the aide, Katie Miller, press secretary for Vice-President Mike Pence, had contracted the virus "out of the blue". ......

Little Richard, the self-proclaimed "architect of rock 'n'...

The deadly coronavirus COVID-19, which has shut down the UN secretariat in New York, along with 32 of its agencies globally, has forced over 37,500 UN staffers worldwide to work from their homes. Asked about a decision to re-open the Secretariat building after nearly a month-long hiatus, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “I don’t know. […]

The post As US Unemployment Hits a Staggering 22 Million, Will UN Layoffs Be Far Behind? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “The Two Popes” has been lined up to write and co-produce a new feature film on the life of Whitney Houston, U.S. media reported April 22.

Up to a third of the country’s medical staff and health workers could lose out in the planned WHO cuts.

The 61-year-old, who led NPB in home runs in 1988, is enjoying his new role in charge of the Wei Chuan Dragons, who will join ...

Swimmer Katsuhiro Matsumoto is headed back to the drawing board

Small firms whose income has been halved by the contagion can get ¥2 million and independent businesspeople can get ¥1 million.

The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels ...

[Daily Trust] Nigeria has confirmed 386 new cases of COVID-19, taking the country's total to 3,912.

What’s clear is that the Jewish rate of death is exponentially higher in the Diaspora compared to Israel and that the virus is devastating the Jewish world.

China says it supports World Health Organisation efforts to investigate the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, but rejects any “presumption of guilt”, after the global body said it was talking to Beijing about sending another delegation to the country.The remarks came as Beijing is under mounting international pressure – particularly from the United States – to allow an inquiry into how the pandemic started, and if it was linked to a laboratory in Wuhan, the city where the new virus strain was…

US Vice-President Mike Pence’s press secretary has the coronavirus, making her the second person who works at the White House complex known to test positive for the virus this week.President Donald Trump, who publicly identified the affected Pence aide on Friday, said he was “not worried” about the virus spreading in the White House. Nonetheless, officials said they were stepping up safety protocols for the complex.US reversal scuppers UN vote on global coronavirus ceasefirePence spokeswoman…

President Donald Trump says he resuscitated Barack Obama’s gasping economy and proceeded to build it to its strongest in generations. Now as record job losses mount across the country, the decline will bear his name in history as well.And those losses come just six months before the election.Presidents of both parties take credit for the economy when it’s roaring and are usually blamed when it fails, regardless of the circumstances of the downturn. An unemployment rate for April of 14.7 per…

A top police officer told me an interesting story about the siege of Polytechnic University last year, when anti-government protesters of the militant persuasion had occupied the campus. He recalled intercepting and arresting a group of youngsters trying to flee the war zone and how he was struck by the reaction of a petrified teenager among them when she was being booked. “Absolutely terrified, shaking,” was how he remembered her. “She thinks I will take her around the back and shoot her…

David Medine is Senior Financial Sector Specialist at the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). He is also CGAP’s lead on data protection and security and works to develop novel, consumer-oriented approaches to data protection and to encourage the creation of cyber security resource centers for developing countries.

The post Financial Scams Rise as Coronavirus Hits Developing Countries appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The world’s poorer nations, reeling under an unrelenting attack on their fragile economies by the COVID-19 pandemic, have suffered an equally deadly body blow: being buried under heavy debt burdens. Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, said last week that in 2019, 64 countries, nearly half […]

The post World’s Poor Hit by Double Jeopardy: a Deadly Virus & a Devastating Debt Burden appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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WASHINGTON: The woman who accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993 called on him to drop out of the US presidential race, saying Thursday she´d take a polygraph about the alleged encounter if he would. Tara Reade said in March that Biden, the Democratic Party´s presumptive...

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TEHRAN: Virus-hit Iran allowed worshippers to attend Friday prayers for the first time in more than two months, but the capital remains under restrictions amid the Middle East’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak. Since reporting its first cases in mid-February, the Islamic republic has...

TRIPOLI: Rocket and shell fire on Tripoli has killed at least 13 civilians and two policemen in the last two days, Libya’s UN-recognised government said on Friday.The Government of National Accord accused forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar of carrying out the attacks, which it said...

A second White House worker this week has tested positive for coronavirus, officials said Friday, even as President Donald Trump continued to go mask-free at a World War II commemoration with veterans in their 90s.

Complex, carefully managed financing structures can provide the funding needed for island states and others seeking to develop energy projects.

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U.S. electronic cigarette maker Juul Labs is pulling out of the Korean market just a year after its launch here amid health concerns over its products.The company announced on Wednesday, "We decided to stop operations in Korea, and have notified sellers here."Launched in the U.S. in 2015, Juul, a li...

The Trump administration is defending its decision not to release a detailed coronavirus reopening plan for the U.S., maintaining they would have been too narrowly-focused for the country's 50 states.The administration's defense comes in response to an Associated Press report that it shelved a repor...

The KLPGA Tour has raised the total purse for its first major championship of the season, which resumes next week after a break of several months due to the coronavirus epidemic.The KLPGA said Thursday that it decided to raise the prize money for the KLPGA Championship from W2.3 billion to W3 billio...

A white former police officer and his son were arrested on Thursday in Georgia, United States of America, and charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man, an incident that touched off a furore in the community and among civil rights activists nationwide.

Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, were taken into custody by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and charged with aggravated assault as well as murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in the town of Brunswick, the agency said in a statement.

The Feb 23 shooting death of Arbery, 25, as he ran unarmed through the small town was captured on video by an unnamed witness in a vehicle near the scene. The video’s wide broadcast in recent days ignited outrage among activists, politicians and celebrities who saw the incident as the latest case of white perpetrators killing a black man and going unpunished.

It was not immediately clear on Thursday if the two men had retained attorneys.

A district attorney appointed to handle the high-profile case after two other prosecutors recused themselves said on Wednesday he would ask a county grand jury to decide if the two men should face charges.

The men’s arrest by the GBI, one day after the agency opened an investigation into the case, appears to have sidelined any grand jury probe.

Three shots

The video footage shows Arbery jogging down a narrow two-lane road and around the McMichaels’ white pickup truck, which had stopped in the right lane with its driver’s door open.

As Arbery crosses back in front of the truck, a gunshot is fired. Arbery is then seen struggling with a man holding a long gun as a second man stands in the bed of the truck brandishing a revolver. Two more shots are heard before Arbery stumbles and falls face down onto the asphalt. The GBI said it was Travis McMichael who fired the fatal round.

According to a police report obtained by the New York Times, Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn County police officer and district attorney’s investigator, told detectives the incident began when he spotted Arbery from his front yard “hauling ass” down the street.

McMichael told police that, because he suspected Arbery in a string of recent neighborhood break-ins, he and his son gave chase in the truck, with Gregory McMichael carrying a .357 Magnum revolver and Travis armed with a shotgun.

Gregory McMichael said Arbery began to “violently attack” his son, fighting him for the shotgun, prompting Travis to open fire.

According to a letter obtained by the Times, the prosecutor in Brunswick argued there was not probable cause to arrest the McMichaels because they were legally carrying firearms, had a right to pursue a burglary suspect and use deadly force to protect themselves.

ISLAMABAD: As many as 1.6 billion of the world’s 2bn informal economy workers are affected by Covid-19 lockdown and containment measures, a new briefing paper issued by the International Labour Organi­sation (ILO) said.

Most are working in the hardest-hit sectors or in small units more vulnerable to shocks including workers in accommodation and food services, manufacturing, wholesale and retail, and the more than 500 million farmers producing for the urban market, the report says. Women are particularly affected in high-risk sectors, it adds.

The Covid-19 lockdown and containment measures threaten to increase relative poverty levels among the world’s informal economy workers by as much as 56 percentage points in low-income countries.

In high-income countries, relative poverty levels among informal workers is estimated to increase by 52 percentage points, while in upper middle-income countries the increase is estimated to be 21 percentage points.

In addition, with these workers needing to work to feed their families, Covid-19 containment measures in many countries cannot be implemented successfully. This is endangering governments’ efforts to protect the population and fight the pandemic. It may become a source of social tension in countries with large informal economies, the report says.

More than 75 per cent of total informal employment takes place in businesses of fewer than ten workers, including 45pc of independent workers without employees.

With most informal workers having no other means of support, they face an almost unsolvable dilemma: to die from hunger or from the virus, the briefing says. This has been exacerbated by disruptions in food supplies, which has particularly affected those in the informal economy.

For the world’s 67 million domestic workers, 75pc of whom are informal workers, unemployment has become as threatening as the virus itself. Many have not been able to work, whether at the request of their employers or in compliance with lockdowns. Those who do continue to go to work face a high risk of contagion, caring for families in private households. For the 11 million migrant domestic workers the situation is even worse.

The countries with the largest informal economies, where full lockdowns have been adopted, are suffering the most from the consequences of the pandemic. Informal economy workers significantly impacted by lockdown vary from 89pc in Latin America and the Arab states to 83pc in Africa, 73pc in Asia and the Pacific, and 64pc in Europe and Central Asia.

Countries need to follow a multi-track strategy that combines several lines of actions relating to both the health and economic impacts of the pandemic, the ILO said.

Among its recommendations, the report highlights the need for policies that reduce the exposure of informal workers to the virus; ensure that those infected have access to health care; provide income and food support to individuals and their families; and prevent damage to the economic fabric of countries.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2020

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