Hun Sen hands out Cambodian-made watches to Asean summit VIPs - The Straits Times

PHNOM PENH - World leaders attending a summit in Phnom Penh will receive Cambodian-made watches from host Hun Sen, a noted fan of luxury timepieces.

The gift to VIPs at the Asean and East Asia Summit gatherings has raised eyebrows in a country with no history of watchmaking.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang are among the guests over three days of meetings that will cover the crisis in Myanmar and other regional issues.

The 25 tourbillon watches will be presented to delegates, said Prime Minister Hun Sen, who plans to wear one himself throughout the summit and at the upcoming Group of 20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings.

The watches feature matt grey faces emblazoned with “Asean Cambodia 2022” set in silver-coloured casing inscribed with “Made in Cambodia”, pictures on Mr Hun Sen’s official Facebook page show.

Mr Hun Sen – who has ruled the kingdom for 37 years and is Asia’s longest-serving leader – said the new watches “show the progress in science and technology of Cambodia”.

The strongman ruler has been pictured in recent years wearing luxury Swiss watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Cambodian firm Prince Horology – tasked with designing and assembling the pieces – rejected suggestions that the items were overly luxurious, stressing that the watch faces were made of stainless steel.

Tourbillon watches are so-called for their intricate inner mechanism, seen from the outside, and patented around 200 years ago by a Swiss-French watchmaker.

While modern horology has made such designs obsolete, tourbillons are highly desirable to watch collectors, with limited editions changing hands for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“They are obviously highly decorated, highly polished,” Prince Horology spokesman Gabriel Tan told AFP. The watches also feature “synthetic rubies”, he said, that are “used to facilitate the watch movement”.

All 25 were designed and assembled in Cambodia over the last 18 months, Mr Tan said, declining to comment on their cost.

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2022-11-11 06:12:57Z
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Malaysia GE15: Low political literacy and indecisiveness limit youth votes - CNA

"They haven’t entered into a stage where they felt like their voting power had no ability to change the outcome and therefore, that certain sense of hopefulness that comes with youth is still very much present in Malaysia," said Mr Chai.

Despite the anticipated turnout, observers remain reserved in the direction young Malaysians are expected to vote.

Surveys show that young voters are more politically undecided, with "many pollsters unwilling to call, one way or another, because of the indecision among the youth," said Mr Wee.

RURAL VS URBAN VOTES

The largest turnout of young voters yet is expected at the upcoming election, following a historic constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

However, Malaysia’s malapportioned electoral system – where voting districts see unequal distribution of voters – will likely limit the impact of the youth vote, said Ms Lee.

Candidates in rural constituencies are expected to have an advantage because they need less votes to win.

Meanwhile, young Malaysians are largely concentrated in richer urban areas that afford more economic and employment opportunities, and more votes are needed in those mega-constituencies with higher population densities to make a difference, said Ms Lee.

"Unfortunately, the youth are working in environments where the votes are not equal. So the impact can go both ways," said Ms Lee. "For them to really make an impact and for their voices to be heard, we need to see at least 80 to 90 per cent turnout of youth."

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2022-11-11 05:01:00Z
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China shortens COVID-19 quarantine times, eases flight curbs - CNA

BEIJING: China on Friday (Nov 11) eased some of its COVID-19 curbs, including shortening by two days quarantine times for close contacts of cases and for inbound travellers and scrapping a penalty on airlines that bring in infected passengers.

The new rules were among the 20 measures examined at the first meeting of the new top leadership body of the ruling Communist Party on Thursday, amid a new push to optimise and improve COVID control policies.

Under the new rules, quarantine for close contacts will be cut to five days at a centralised location plus three days at home, from seven days centralised and three days at home.

A similar shortening of quarantine rules was made for inbound travellers, according to the revised rules, which the National Health Commission (NHC) published on its website.

The suspension of international flight routes due to the detection of infected passengers was also abolished, while for inbound travellers, the pre-departure COVID-19 test requirement was cut to once in 48 hours from twice.

The party's Politburo Standing Committee stressed the need to minimise the impact of China's zero-COVID measures on the economy while not relaxing the clamp-down on outbreaks.

In what appeared to be another reform to simplify the campaign against the coronavirus, the NHC adjusted its classification of risky areas to "high" and "low" risk, from "high", "medium" and "low" previously.

The NHC said the number of people affected by COVID-19 measures should be minimised.

Secondary close contacts would no longer have to be identified although close contacts would still be, the health authority said.

Every effort should also be made to ensure smooth logistics for firms and industrial parks during outbreaks and important firms should not be arbitrarily required to suspend production.

China would also draw up a plan to accelerate vaccination, especially for the elderly, the NHC said.

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2022-11-11 05:52:00Z
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Households, firms urged to assess energy use ahead of 2024 carbon tax increase - CNA

“Climate action is needed now. It's not something that is amorphous, something in the future, or something that is imaginary,” she said.

The world is already witnessing calamities with the current 1.1 degrees Celsius warming, so “we really need to get our act together”, urged Ms Fu.

She said that the journey towards cleaner energy will be “a very long one” as it would involve a fundamental change on how we have been powering the world, such as the way we work and the kind of energy used.

Laying out a long-term, but certain, trajectory would let companies and societies know the direction Singapore is headed, although it will not be smooth-sailing, she noted. 

“We have the Ukraine war, we have inflation right now, who knows what will happen a few years down the road, but I think that humanity has to work in that direction,” she said, adding that governments and businesses will have to work closely towards this.

“We'll try our darndest to move as fast as we can, but at the same time making this transition an inclusive one, so that we won't have people falling behind.”

IMPACT ON BUSINESSES

Companies that will be affected by the carbon tax hike, meanwhile, are being urged to assess how they can reduce their own emissions in the run-up to 2024.

There are certain crucial sectors that are higher emitters due to the nature of their operations, but are a key part of Singapore’s trade infrastructure, noted Ms Fu, such as the petrochemical industry.

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2022-11-10 05:42:00Z
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Australian sentenced to 129 years in Philippine child sex abuse case - The Straits Times

MANILA – An Australian has been sentenced to 129 years in a Philippine jail as part of a child sexual abuse case involving victims as young as 18 months.

It was the second conviction for Peter Gerard Scully, who is already serving a life sentence for an initial batch of charges involving the rape and trafficking of girls.

The Philippines has become a global hotspot for child sex exploitation, helped by poverty, English fluency and high Internet connectivity in the country.

“I hope this sends a very strong message to all abusers, all human traffickers, that crime really does not pay,” Ms Merlynn Barola-Uy, a regional prosecutor in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, told AFP.

A court handed down the sentence on Nov 3, after Scully and his three co-accused entered into a plea bargaining agreement.

They were charged with 60 offences, including trafficking, child pornography, child abuse and rape.

Scully’s girlfriend, Lovely Margallo, was sentenced to 126 years in jail. Two others were given sentences of more than nine years.

The victims and their families have accepted the terms of the agreement and consider it a “sweet victory”, according to a statement posted on the regional prosecution office’s Facebook page.

“They all want to put closure to this dark phase of their lives and move on,” the statement reads.

‘Big victory’

There were nine victims in all in the two batches of charges against Scully.

The Nov 3 conviction involved seven victims, including an 18-month-old baby girl and a child whose body was found buried under the floor of a house rented by Scully, Ms Barola-Uy said.

“This is a big victory, not only for us prosecutors in the Department of Justice, but more importantly this is a big victory for the victim-survivors,” she said.

Ms Barola-Uy said the youngest victim was now in Grade 2, while others are now adults.

Child rights campaigner Father Shay Cullen said the rare conviction showed “the world that justice can be done” in the Philippines.

But he said the Philippine agency tasked with investigating cybersex crimes lacked manpower.

“There are only 10 police officers investigating the cybersex crimes in the Philippines – only 10 for a population of 110 million people,” Father Cullen told AFP.

Scully was arrested in 2015 in Malaybalay, another southern Philippine city, after fleeing from Australia in 2011.

He had come to the Philippines to escape fraud charges in his home country.

He then set up a cybersex business, filming teenage girls from impoverished families as he had sex with them or used sex toys, investigators said previously.

The videos were allegedly sold to customers in Germany, the United States and Brazil.

Ms Barola-Uy said Scully and his girlfriend meted out “extreme kinds of abuses” to their victims.

“They were very graphic. They were very brutal,” she said.

Most of the people who pay to view these types of sex videos are abroad, with potentially thousands of children being abused, often with their parents’ consent, the authorities say.

The United Nations Children’s Fund said in 2021 that the Philippines is one of the top global sources of child sex abuse materials. AFP

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2022-11-09 10:32:40Z
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Shadow of Donald Trump looms over expected Republican win in US midterms, say experts - CNA

Mr Varoga said Mr Trump’s involvement complicates matters for the Republican party, as all Republican actions will be deemed as being done under his influence.

“It's going to be difficult for him to adjust to the fact that he is not president. It will also make it really hard for the Republicans in Congress to say that they're doing anything independently,” he said.

“It will allow President Biden to have a foil, but it also means that everything is going to be seen in the context to 2024.”

Mr Varoga added that the denying of an election’s legitimacy in the US - something the Republicans and Mr Trump have constantly done - is “very dangerous” and “sends the wrong signal to the world” and throughout the country.

According to stats site FiveThirtyEight, 185 Republicans running for House, Senate and governor seats in this year's midterm elections have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, echoing the allegation that Mr Trump has often repeated.

“I think that if some of the people who are going to be elected had been in office two years ago, Donald Trump would have probably succeeded in overturning the election, despite the fact that he had lost it,” said Mr Varoga.

Mr Newhouse, who worked on the presidential campaigns of former Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney, said what really unites voters and the Republican Party is "their dislike and antipathy towards Democrats".

“You cannot overestimate the amount of extreme partisan polarisation,” he emphasised.

“What unites Republicans, whether they are pro-Trump, anti-Trump, (or) election deniers, is the fear of Democrats taking control.”

He said that while the party has its own inner problems, they still put up a united front in the country’s elections.

KEY ISSUES

Analysts note that despite the Republicans’ denial of the legitimacy of election results, other issues are what voters truly care about and would vote on in these midterms.

These include inflation and the economy, abortion, immigration, gun control and climate change.

“Economy and inflation have been consistent issues during this election cycle. Voters are reminded of it every time they go to the gas station or the grocery store. They are paying more and there has been no relief. Gas prices have gone down, but grocery prices (and) energy prices are up,” said Mr Newhouse.

He added that the Democratic momentum built upon the abortion issue in August has stalled in the face of shifting election issues.

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2022-11-09 06:36:00Z
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Asia's top universities: NUS slips to 2nd place, NTU ranks 5th - The Straits Times

SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) came in second in an annual ranking of institutions in the region, losing its place as Asia’s No. 1 university over the past four years.

China’s Peking University took the top spot in the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS)  ranking of Asia’s universities released on Tuesday.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) slipped to fifth spot in the list by the Britain-based higher education consultancy that highlights Asia’s top universities. NTU was placed third last year, together with the University of Hong Kong. 

This year’s QS Asia Rankings are the largest, featuring 760 universities, up from 687 in the previous year. 

It evaluated institutions based on several factors, including academic and employer recognition, research, resources and the proportion of international faculty and students.

China’s Tsinghua University came in third and the University of Hong Kong was placed fourth. 

China is the region’s most represented location, with 128 institutions making it to the list, followed by India with 118, and Japan with 106.

QS senior vice-president Ben Sowter said: “Singaporean higher education has much to be proud of. For nearly a decade, it dominated the top tier of QS’ Asia University Rankings, holding two of the top three spots and retaining the No. 1 position – occupied by NUS or NTU. Despite this year’s slight decline, both its leading institutions are among Asia’s top five.

“With two of Asia’s premier research institutions calling Singapore home, its contribution to the body of work enhancing global understanding in science and technology, among other fields, cannot be understated.”

NUS is Asia’s second-most well-regarded university among international academics, based on QS’ academic reputation indicator, just behind the University of Tokyo, QS said in a statement. 

NTU was placed ninth regionally for academic reputation.  

According to QS’ measure of scholarly impact in terms of citations per paper, as well as international collaboration, NUS and NTU are both among the region’s top five.   

QS said Singapore’s primary field of research is in engineering and technology, specifically petroleum engineering and computer science.

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2022-11-08 10:00:00Z
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