Australia's food safety agency said on Tuesday it was weighing accusations of contamination about some spice mixes sold by Indian companies MDH and Everest to decide if a food recall was required, becoming the latest regulator to step up scrutiny. Singapore ordered a recall of the Everest mix as well, flagging high levels of ethylene oxide, which is unfit for human consumption and a cancer risk on long exposure. "We are working with international counterparts to understand the issue and with federal, state and territory food enforcement agencies to determine if further action is required in Australia," Food Standards Australia New Zealand told Reuters.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday his governing party's major defeat in last weekend's by-elections was largely due to a political fundraising scandal and that he would not step down or replace party executives to take responsibility. Instead, Kishida said he will push anti-corruption measures and political reforms. “As I take the results seriously, I believe as president of the governing party we must tackle the challenges we face one by one and achieve results, and this is the way I will take responsibility," Kishida said.
Banking giant HSBC said Tuesday that chief executive Noel Quinn would retire after overseeing a "successful transformation" of the firm and record profits during his almost five years in charge.HSBC on Tuesday said it had begun the process of finding a successor but did not specify when Quinn would step down.
The White House said on Monday it viewed the reported role of the Indian intelligence service in two assassination plots in Canada and the United States as a serious matter. The Washington Post reported that an officer in India's intelligence service was directly involved in a foiled plan to assassinate a U.S. citizen who is one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most vocal critics in the United States.
JAKARTA (Reuters) -Microsoft will invest $1.7 billion over the next four years into expanding cloud services and artificial intelligence in Indonesia, including building data centres, visiting chief executive Satya Nadella said on Tuesday. Jakarta is Nadella's first stop on a trip to Southeast Asian countries aimed at promoting the U.S. company's generative AI technology. Microsoft's investment will "bring the latest and greatest AI infrastructure to Indonesia," Nadella said.
The United Nations' top court is ruling Tuesday on a request by Nicaragua for judges to order Germany to halt military aid to Israel, arguing that Berlin’s support enables acts of genocide and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza. Nicaragua’s case is the latest legal bid by a country with historic ties to the Palestinian people to stop Israel’s offensive. Late last year, South Africa accused Israel of genocide at the court.
Around 30 men are crammed into a Kabul classroom, part of the debut student cohort at a Taliban-run institute training tourism and hospitality professionals. The students vary in age, education level and professional experience. Afghanistan’s rulers are pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls.
Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized check for $1.3 billion above his head. The 46-year-old immigrant's luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month — a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes, which he and his wife will split with a friend — has changed his life. It also raised awareness about Iu Mien people, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the U.S. following the Vietnam War.
As upcoming commencement ceremonies grew closer Tuesday, universities across the U.S. grappled with how to clear out encampments of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, with some continuing negotiations and others turning to force and ultimatums that have resulted in arrests and clashes with police. Dozens of people were arrested Monday during protests at universities in Texas and Virginia, while Columbia University in New York said it began suspending students. At the University of Texas at Austin, an attorney said at least 40 demonstrators were arrested Monday.
Columbia University began suspending students who defied orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m. Monday, after the school's president said it would not divest from Israel — a demand that has sparked protests on college campuses across the country.
Jordan Vassallo is lukewarm about casting her first presidential ballot for President Joe Biden in November. Vassallo will be voting for a constitutional ballot amendment that would prevent the state of Florida from prohibiting abortion before a fetus can survive on its own — essentially the standard that existed nationally before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional protections to abortion and left the matter for states to decide. Passage of the amendment would wipe away Florida's six-week abortion law, which Vassallo says makes no sense.
About 30 Ukrainian men have died trying to illegally cross Ukraine's borders and avoid fighting in the war against Russia which started in 2022, the spokesman for Ukraine's border service told Ukrinform news agency. "Some lost their lives while attempting to cross a mountain river or traverse mountains," said Andriy Demchenko, according to a Ukrinform report late on Monday. With some exceptions, Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country as they may be mobilised to fight, according to Ukraine's martial law.
Shares in French skincare giant L'Occitane jumped almost 13 percent in Hong Kong on Tuesday as they resumed trading after its owner offered to take it private.The offer, submitted with the support of US private equity giant Blackstone, concerns nearly 28 percent of the shares.
Voters in an upstate New York congressional district will choose between a Democrat regarded by many as the natural successor to the longtime congressman who vacated the seat earlier this year and a Republican with crossover appeal in a special election Tuesday. Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins, who arrived in Congress in 2005, resigned in February to become president of Shea's Performing Arts Center in Buffalo. With Republicans holding a narrow margin in the U.S. House, even a race for a seat widely expected to remain in Democratic hands has drawn its share of scrutiny.
The confrontation was an escalation on the 53,000-student campus in the state’s capital.
The first week of testimony at Donald Trump's hush money trial was the scene-setter for jurors: Manhattan prosecutors portrayed what they say was an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by burying negative stories. Now prosecutors are working on filling in the details of how they believe Trump and his allies pulled it off. Court resumes Tuesday with Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts, including one that Cohen used to buy the silence of porn performer Stormy Daniels.
Mexico is suing Ecuador at the world court over the armed raid that led to the arrest of the Ecuadorian former vice president Jorge Glas, saying it violated the Vienna Convention.
Donald Trump will make his most concentrated effort yet to turn his criminal trial into a political asset in the next two days, heading from the courtroom to the campaign trail and back again.
Former President Donald Trump met privately over breakfast with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday.
Far from the soaring skyscrapers synonymous with Hong Kong, scientists and farmers labour in a paddy field on the city's outskirts to revive dormant rice varieties that once sprung from local soil."They are the only 20 Hong Kong rice varieties we are left with," he told AFP, seated by land reclaimed from wild ginger flower fields in the city's New Territories region.