MELBOURNE, Australia — Judges from the Court of Appeal in southeast Australian state Victoria on April 7 rejected the appeal bid of John Higgs, who is serving an 18-year prison sentence for importing a record amount of ecstasy into the country. The 74-year-old was sentenced in 2007 for importing 15 million ecstasy pills in tomato tins. The former client of turncoat Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo has filed an appeal against his conviction and applied to be released on bail while the case is considered. Two judges of Victoria’s Court of Appeal said his case didn’t meet the “truly exceptional” threshold to…
Author: zenger.news
SYDNEY — Social media giant Facebook has decided to start a dedicated Australian news service by the end of the year, as executives denied the company tried to intimidate parliaments during the media bargaining code negotiations. The government agreed to change the code after the tech giant banned Australian users from accessing news. The company’s vice president of policy for the Asia Pacific region Simon Milner faced questions at a Senate inquiry on April 12 about the news ban. Asked if it was a move to intimidate the parliament. “Absolutely not,” Milner said. In the news ban, few other Facebook pages…
SYDNEY — The Australian Transport Workers Union has argued that Qantas Airways had long been planning to outsource its ground workers before the airline moved to combat the Covid-19 fallout. Approximately 2,500 jobs held by baggage handlers, ramp workers, and cabin cleaners across 10 airports, including Sydney and Melbourne, have been outsourced to sub-contractors. Qantas’ “extremely severe cash burn” following Covid-19 and the grounding of fleets was laid out on April 12 in the Federal Court as a statutory loss of AUD 2.7 billion ($2.05 billion) in 2020, and AUD 1.5 billion ($1.14 billion) so far for 2021. These figures would…
PUNE, India — SoftBank-backed Oyo Rooms, which claims to be the world’s second-largest hotel chain, has managed to save its subsidiary Oyo Hotels and Homes Pvt Ltd from insolvency proceedings, for now. Rakesh Yadav, the owner of a 21-room hotel in India’s northern city of Gurugram, approached the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against Oyo Hotels in 2019 over unpaid dues of INR 16 lakhs ($21,473). Yadav’s hotel, previously known as Yellow White Residency, was under the Collection-O properties, according to the NCLT filings. The NCLT, a quasi-judicial body that deals with corporate disputes in India, ordered the commencement of a corporate…
NEW DELHI — The drive-in fashion show — a pandemic innovation born out of necessity — arrived in India with a splash last month at the Fashion Design Council of India x Lakmé Fashion Week. As many as six shows at the event had guests watch the proceedings from their cars, neatly parked in slots flanking the ramp at the sprawling Princess Dock venue in Mumbai’s Mazgaon. Designers such as Manish Malhotra, Payal Singhal, Masaba, and Bodice by Ruchika Sachdeva had drive-in showcases at the “phygital” fashion week, while other designers stuck to fashion films and pre-recorded ramp walks that were streamed online. “The…
NEW DELHI — In the run-up to the June 4 release of “83”, a film inspired by the Indian team’s victory in the 1983 Cricket World Cup, the producers have launched an exhaustive merchandise line which fuses two of India’s most binding religions — Bollywood and Cricket. Valued at over INR 20 crores ($2.67 million), ’83 Believe’ is the widest consumer product range launched by any film-based property in India, as per the makers who are focusing on strengthening their licensing and merchandising business. With an average of 2,000 feature films a year and an insatiable appetite for entertainment, India is…
MUMBAI, India — Major Fayazullah Khan, a company commander in an infantry regiment of the Indian Army, shot himself in January this year. He was posted at Kupwara in India’s northern Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. His family said, “the Army is not paying proper attention to mental health”. Suicides among India’s armed forces are not new. But a worrying trend of rising cases is making serving officers and veterans question the system and the training. A recent study by the tri-service think tank United Service Institution of India, which was retracted, stated that over half of the 1.3 million Army…
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia now has two Grand Muftis, after the country’s oldest national Islamic body declared a new leader despite the role already being filled by another imam. A mufti is an Islamic jurist and an imam is someone who leads the prayers. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) and the Islamic High Council of Australia appointed Imam Abdul Quddoos Al Azhari – one of the country’s longest-serving imams – as the country’s National Grand Mufti. However, the role isn’t exactly vacant. Ibrahim Abu Mohamad is serving as Australia’s Grand Mufti since 2011, with a short four-month break in 2018. He was…
SYDNEY, Australia — The impact of myriad Chinese trade sanctions on Australian goods in the past year has been “quite limited,” with most exporters managing to find other markets, as per a new report. China has targeted Australian beef, barley, coal, copper, cotton, seafood, sugar, timber, and wine. Before the sanctions, these exports were worth about AUD25 billion in 2019, or 1.3 percent of gross domestic product. As of end-Jan, the value of these exports to China had dropped to about AUD5 billion a year, the analysis by Roland Rajah, Lowy Institute chief economist, shows. But most exporters (barring wine and…
SYDNEY — Superannuation laws before parliament could encourage funds to chase “asset bubbles” instead of being a stabilizing influence on financial markets. James Pawluk, a spokesman at McKell Institute, warns the legislative changes could make it harder to deal with unpredictable “black swan” events as the bill is drafted for perfectly behaved markets. “The proposed performance benchmarks will make it less viable for funds to adopt a strategy of steering clear of an asset bubble as it’s forming unless they are convinced it will burst or dissipate before the current performance period ends,” Pawluk said in a parliamentary hearing on April 8. He…