PUNE, India — For the second time in three years, India has been on the United States’ monitoring list of countries with “questionable” foreign exchange policies and currency manipulation. Previously, the U.S. added India to this list in 2018 and removed the South Asian democracy from the list in the following year. “Over the four quarters through December 2020, five major US trading partners — Vietnam, Switzerland, Taiwan, India, and Singapore — intervened in the foreign exchange market in a sustained, asymmetric manner with the effect of weakening their currencies,” notes the semiannual foreign-exchange report of the United States Treasury Department. Some Indian…
Author: zenger.news
Scientists have discovered heavy metal vapors made up of iron and nickel in comets in our solar system and even further afield in interstellar space, meaning that objects in both may have more in common than previously thought. The findings are the result of two studies: one by a Belgian team that used data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and another by a Polish team that used data from the same source. (The telescope is in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.) While astronomers have long known that that comets contain significant quantities of heavy metals, the…
A new documentary is shining a light on the mountains of household plastic waste building up along the shore of one of Europe’s longest waterways, due to a lack of processing facilities. The pollution is inundating the Tisza River, a major tributary to Europe’s second-longest river, the Danube. The waste is making its way downstream, traveling through several European countries before ending up in the Black Sea. The disaster has some locals scrambling to process recyclable materials themselves, which often involves driving it to neighboring countries, due to a lack of state support for recycling facilities. Among the places with…
Diamonds and jewelry worth $2 million stolen during the FIFA World Cup in 2018 has been recovered after the thief was tracked down in Argentina and confessed to the crime. Police in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia’s Volga Federal District found the jewelry in a wooded area on May 20 after Edgar Alejandro Valero revealed the general location. A suitcase containing diamonds and jewelry was stolen from an employee of the Seven Diamonds store at the Kazan Expo International Exhibition Centre in 2018. After analyzing CCTV footage and DNA traces at the scene, police identified Colombian citizen Valero as…
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Finance Minister Grant Robertson has begun the annual roadshow selling his budget, and using Australia as a benchmark he claims New Zealand is winning “on almost every level”. Robertson unveiled the first budget of Jacinda Ardern‘s second term yesterday, which had a major boost to social security as its biggest new spending item. The budget has been well received in New Zealand, with even Business NZ saying the welfare spend was smartly considered and appropriate. At the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Bank‘s lunch in Wellington on May 21, a high-spirited Robertson launched into a trans-Tasman comparison…
SYDNEY — An independent review into the workplace culture at Australia’s Parliament has officially launched. Anyone who has worked as a federal political staffer or at Parliament House in Canberra can now give feedback on their experience to an inquiry led by Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins. She is set to report back with recommendations by November. The Australian Human Rights Commission, on May 20, commenced inviting contributions for its Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces. The Commission is undertaking the Review of the workplace culture of Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces, established by the Federal Government with the support of the Opposition and crossbench. Sex…
CANBERRA, Australia — A swim school franchisor has been ordered to pay an AU$23 million ($17.88 million) fine after it falsely told franchisees they would have an operational swim school within a year of signing up. But because it’s in liquidation, it’s unlikely to be able to pay up. The penalty was imposed by the Federal Court on May 19 in a lawsuit launched by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Jump Loops, the company that franchised Jump! Swim schools, told 174 franchisees that they would have an operational swim school within 12 months of signing a franchise agreement. “12 month…
MELBOURNE, Australia — Lock them up and throw away the key. Throw the book at them. Judges are too lenient these days. For decades the community attitude toward sentencing has been that the punishments being handed down just aren’t harsh enough. But when people are asked to step into the shoes of judges, research shows the sentences they’d give are not that different. The more information a person knows about a case, the less punitive they are in their decisions, the Sentencing Advisory Council‘s Cynthia Marwood said. The council tweeted “New case study, increased interactivity: ‘You be the Judge’ online workshop. Learn…
SYDNEY — The Australian state’s New South Wales deputy premier has urged Upper Hunter voters to forgo “sending the government a message” ahead of a by-election which could cost the coalition government its working majority. Some 13 would-be parliamentarians are making their last pitches to the people of the Upper Hunter before polls open at 8 am on May 22. While Labor candidate Jeff Drayton talked up his party’s promises and sought to differentiate himself from the abundance of coal-loving candidates, Nationals Leader John Barilaro’s message was simple. “Don’t change that jockey mid-race,” Barilaro claimed on May 21 alongside the party’s candidate, construction manager David Layzell. “In…
CANBERRA, Australia — A group of unions says a “cynical and callous” decision by Qantas to prevent stood-down workers from accessing their sick leave should be reversed, with the matter set to appear in the High Court. A Federal Court appeals bench in November rejected the unions’ claim, saying that because the employees were not working there was nothing to take leave from. Qantas won an earlier Federal Court case in May. The unions on May 21, are seeking leave to appeal to the High Court, arguing Qantas was acting callously and “like a corporate dictator”. The unions said a number…