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China Central Bank Governor Pledges Stronger Support to Economy BloombergView Full coverage on Google News
Myanmar's central bank has ordered local companies and banks to suspend and reschedule repayment of foreign loans, according to local media, its latest effort to exert control over foreign currency flows.
The central bank issued the order on Jul 13, according to Myanmar Now, a news agency. Reuters could not independently verify the document, which was circulating on social media.
"According to foreign currency law and foreign currency management rules, the repayment of foreign loans including original and interest values should be suspended and licensed banks should rearrange with their customers … regarding repayment schedule," the central bank statement said.
Central bank officials did not answer calls seeking comment.
The kyat currency's plummet against the dollar has driven up fuel and food prices in a country already in crisis since the military seized power in a brutal coup last year, halting a decade of political and economic reforms.
To relieve some of that pressure, the central bank has announced a series of orders on local businesses depositing and exchanging foreign currency at local banks within one working day, and instructing ministries and local governments not to use foreign currencies for domestic transactions.
Last year, the central bank briefly tried tethering the kyat to a reference rate against the dollar after a slump in the exchange rate.
The official central bank exchange rate for the kyat is set at 1,850 per dollar but has tended to be well below the unofficial black-market rate.
MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday (Jul 14) that attempts by the Group of Seven to cap oil prices may in fact cause them to rise.
"Those plans are anti-market and risky," she told a weekly briefing.
The cap scheme was first mooted last month by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as part of a campaign to increase pressure on Moscow to end what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine. The shape of the final deal and price level have yet to be announced.
The United States and European Union have announced restrictions on Russian oil purchases as a way of punishing Moscow.
Russian oil has already sold with a hearty discount to global grades amid difficulties with financing and logistics.
The price of Russian Urals blend stands at around US$75 per barrel, in comparison to the Brent benchmark front-month futures of just below US$100. Russia had initially drafted its 2022 budget using the Urals average price of US$62.2 per barrel.
They may be playing a part most of the time, but actors sometimes become real-life heroes.
Hong Kong actor Gordon Lam sustained an injury yesterday (July 13) while protecting a child on the set of Andy Lau's newest film I Did It My Way and was conveyed to a hospital, Hong Kong media outlets reported.
Gordon, 54, was performing a stunt where he had to traverse uneven ground with a child in his arms when he tripped over stones and fell.
However, he understood that the child he was holding would get injured if he wasn't careful so Gordon chose to bear the brunt of the impact instead.
The actor intentionally leaned into the fall with one side of his body slamming onto the ground hard, in turn causing multiple wounds on his body, but ensuring that the child was protected.
Gordon's fall and injuries left him temporarily immobile and crew members immediately called for an ambulance when they realised this, according to Hong Kong news reports.
After preliminary treatment was administered to the injured actor, it was then determined that he would be conveyed to the hospital for further examination.
Despite Gordon's injuries and hospitalisation, the filming still continued. Purportedly, the filming location in Tsing Yi was expensive to use so cast and crew had to work with the tight schedule afforded to them.
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Although actors Simon Yam and Chin Ka-lok were also present at the filming location, they were entirely unaware that this situation had occurred.
The film's director Jason Kwan said that they were filming in two different groups, shedding light on the lack of knowledge on set. When approached by Hong Kong media, he directed them to check with the producer, Andy, for more information.
It was later reported that Gordon is safely recovering in the hospital.
Said the actor: "It was a small incident, in order to ensure safety, I went to the hospital for a check-up. There are no serious issues, thank you for your concern!"
I Did It My Way is Andy's latest production, and will have a star-studded cast including Eddie Peng, Hedwig Tam and Andy himself.
The film is rumoured to follow criminal doings on the dark web, as well as the undercover forces of anti-narcotics authorities.
I Did It My Way is expected to be released in 2023.
READ ALSO: 'Even superstars have to do housework': Andy Lau mops the floor, goes viral
khooyihang@asiaone.com
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Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa presents his national statement as a part of the World Leaders' Summit at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain November 1, 2021. Andy Buchanan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
COLOMBO, July 13 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was expected to head to Singapore after fleeing to the Maldives in the early hours of Wednesday, a government source in Sri Lanka told Reuters, as protests continued in Colombo.
The source, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the subject, said Rajapaksa could send his resignation to the speaker of Sri Lankan parliament after landing in Singapore.
An aide to Rajapaksa and the Singapore government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reporting by Waruna Cudah Nimal Karunatilake, writing by Krishna N. Das, Editing by William Maclean
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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SINGAPORE — At the start of this year, Valerie joined a multinational company in the finance sector as a fresh graduate in an analyst role.
Six months into the job, her manager ordered her to fetch him a glass of water. She found it offensive but she agreed to do so anyway because she was new and did not want to ruffle any feathers.
“As I was about to take his water bottle, he said that he was joking and that women are always so eager to please men,” the 27-year-old recounted.
She, like many other women who spoke to TODAY for this article, declined to be named as she is still working at the same company.
“I walked out and in response, he said ‘Women are always sulking’.”
Yes, it’s 2022 and women are still receiving comments like these at work.
In interviews with 13 working women and two women’s groups, TODAY found that gender discrimination is still alive and well across various industries, in companies big and small and faced by women at all levels of their career, whether rookie or board member.
To be fair, women in Singapore have made huge strides at the workplace over the past several decades, with the Republic taking the top spot globally for having the highest percentage of female chief executive officers, according to a Deloitte report released this year.
To further promote equality, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced during last year's National Day Rally that the Government will be introducing a set of laws to better protect workers against discrimination based on nationality, age, race, gender and disability.
And then in March this year, Parliament endorsed the first ever White Paper on women’s development, which included recommendations such as the introduction of new workplace fairness legislation and the entrenchment of flexible work arrangements and professional development programmes for women.
Many companies, too, have taken steps over the past decade or so to implement initiatives such as diversity training and flexi-work programmes to promote gender equality.
But laws and policies can only do so much as long as some stubborn biases remain, many interviewees said.
Women with decades of working experience told TODAY that they have certainly seen progress since they first started work, with greater awareness of gender discrimination and more opportunities for advancement.
But they add that women today face new challenges.
More are becoming professionals, while still bearing a disproportionate burden of household duties and caregiving. And so they are juggling more responsibilities overall and are sometimes penalised at work for it.
And the fact that there is more awareness about gender equality these days has also made discrimination harder to pin down and call out.
Several women told TODAY about situations where they strongly suspected that they were being subject to gender bias, but they had no real evidence because their colleagues were careful not to be overtly sexist.
This comes hand in hand with another trend highlighted by several female leaders of “diversity washing”, where organisations implement superficial diversity policies that look good for their brands but fail to effect any change.
Ms Nurul Jihadah Hussain, the founder of The Codette Project, an initiative to support minority women in tech, said that too often, companies are quick to pat themselves on the back after hiring a few people from diverse backgrounds and call it a day.
"Companies are pointing at one or two individuals, who may be exceptions, and saying 'We are doing okay'. What they should do instead is to ask themselves: 'We have these individuals and that's great, but how can we do better?'"
In September last year, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said that the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep) receives an annual average of 49 gender-related discrimination complaints between 2014 and first half of 2021, behind nationality and age-related discrimination complaints.
Meanwhile, a 2020 survey by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry that polled 384 respondents, 67 per cent of whom were women, found that four in 10 women had experienced gender discrimination in the workplace. However, only 12 per cent of them had made reports.
In another survey published in 2021 by market research consultancy Blackbox, which polled 2,000 Singaporeans on their perceptions, attitudes and experiences with gender inequalities, 20 per cent of the female respondents said they had missed out on job promotions because of their gender.
