Oil Plunge A Panacea For Crude-reliant Asia

U. S. tech giant Apple Inc. pulled an advertisement set in Thailand after a backlash from lawmakers, influencers and citizens, and calls for a boycott over the short film’s portrayal of the Southeast Asian nation that they deemed offensive. The 10-minute Apple film titled “The Underdogs: OOO (Out Of Office),” the fifth installment in the comedic series that follows a group of co-workers as they navigate workplace assignments and solve issues with Apple products and features, was online for about two weeks.

The gloves are off in Taiwan, where government officials and citizens alike are furiously denouncing J. K. Rowling, after the Harry Potter author weighed in on the culture war overshadowing Olympic boxing. Local politicians and journalists are taking jabs at Rowling, some Harry Potter fans have vowed to boycott her products, and social media users have defended Lin Yu Ting, the 28-year-old Chinese Taipei women’s boxer who has found herself at the center of a raging debate about biology and sports. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Read More: What to Know About the Gender Fight in Olympic Boxing As boxing events kicked off at the Olympics in Paris this week, the eligibility of Taiwan’s Lin as well as Algeria’s Imane Khelif has been questioned by critics claiming that they are men pretending to be women for competitive advantage.

When, on May 20, Cho Jung-tai finally took his post as Premier of Taiwan, the veteran lawmaker was eager to start enacting an ambitious legislative agenda—including combating online fraud, raising the minimum wage, and green-lighting some 140 infrastructure projects. But just over a week later the island’s legislature passed amendments that enhanced its scrutiny powers over the government to a level that critics deemed a brazen attempt to hobble the new administration of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) President Lai Ching-te.

China’s plan to introduce a nationwide digital identification system has been met with criticism of government overreach in a country that already closely monitors and censors speech. Some legal experts and users in the world’s largest internet market have openly doubted the efforts’ stated goal of protecting privacy after authorities published the proposal last week.

CARACAS — The stakes grew higher for Venezuela’s electoral authority to show proof backing its decision to declare President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the country’s presidential election after the United States on Thursday recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the victor, discrediting the official results of the highly anticipated vote. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The U.

On March 14, 2016, in the squid grounds off the coast of Patagonia, a rusty Chinese vessel named the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was fishing illegally, several miles inside Argentine waters. Spotted by an Argentine coast-guard patrol and ordered over the radio to halt, the specially-designed squid-fishing ship, known as a “jigger,” fled the scene.