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SINGAPORE: An advertisement featuring an actor of Chinese origin with his skin darkened to portray different races has sparked anger in multi-ethnic Singapore, prompting an apology from the country’s state-owned broadcaster.Race is a sensitive issue in Singapore, which is home to ethnic Chinese, ethnic Indians and Muslim Malays, as well as a large number of expatriates from all over the world.The ad, part of a government-initiated campaign for cashless transactions in the tech-savvy city-state, featured actor Dennis Chew from broadcaster Mediacorp as four characters. His skin was darkened to depict an Indian man and a Malay woman wearing a headscarf, and he also portrayed a Chinese man and a Chinese woman. Each character was shown holding a plate of food paid for electronically.“Brownface in a Singaporean ad in 2019. I thought we already went over this,” magazine editor Ruby Thiagarajan said on Twitter, in a post that had been retweeted nearly 3,000 times by Monday.“Brownface” or “blac...

GILROY United States: A gunman killed three people, including a six-year-old boy, at a food festival in California before being shot dead by police, in the latest chapter of America’s epidemic of gun violence.The shooter broke into the Gilroy Garlic Festival by cutting a fence and began firing at random, local police said, confirming that 15 other festivalgoers had been wounded. Video footage showed people fleeing in terror as rifle rounds rang out at one of the largest food events in the country, which attracts around 100,000 each year to the city of Gilroy, 80 miles (130 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco.The shooter has been identified as a 19-year-old man named Santino William Legan, CBS News reported.Local police chief Scot Smithee said his officers, who confronted the assailant less than a minute after the alarm was raised, were searching for a possible second suspect.The grandmother of six-year-old Stephen Romero said he was shot while attending the event with his mother and...

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: An eight-year-old boy died on Monday and his mother was injured when a man pushed them in front of a train in Germany’s Frankfurt railway station, police said. The suspect, a 40-year-old man of African origin who was unrelated to the victims, ran off but was overpowered by passers-by and detained by police.The woman was being treated in hospital after narrowly escaping from the tracks as an arriving ICE high speed train ran over her child. Police said they had opened a murder inquiry and were questioning the suspect for a possible motive. “The boy and his mother were pushed in front of an arriving train,” said a police spokeswoman. “The mother was able to save herself”.Passers-by watched and ran after the fleeing man, and he was arrested near the station, she added. According to news channel NTV, the suspect is a citizen of Eritrea. from The News International - World https://ift.tt/2GAYqAO

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was “poisoned” by an unidentified toxic substance but doctors have sent him back to jail despite his condition, his lawyer and personal physician said Monday.President Vladimir Putin’s top opponent was rushed to hospital on Sunday a day after almost 1,400 people were arrested at an unauthorised protest, in the largest police crackdown on dissent in recent years.Navalny was hospitalised following what was described as an acute allergic reaction, but his supporters later said they believed he had been exposed to poison.“It is indeed poisoning by some unknown chemical substance,” his lawyer Olga Mikhailova told reporters Monday outside Moscow’s hospital No 64, which treated Navalny.Navalny on Sunday had swollen eyelids, discharge in the eye and a rash on his upper body, his personal physician Anastasia Vasilyeva said.She told reporters on Monday that both she and the 43-year-old politician believe the reaction could have been a response to “some ch...

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump called civil rights activist Al Sharpton a “con man” who is “always looking for a score” on Monday, fresh off a weekend in which the US president dominated headlines with attacks against a prominent black lawmaker.On Saturday and Sunday, Trump took aim at Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, a high-profile critic of his administration whose district covers much of the majority black city of Baltimore.When Sharpton tweeted late on Sunday that he had “arrived in DC from Atlanta, headed to Baltimore” it was apparently too much for Trump to resist.The US president retweeted Sharpton’s message early on Monday, writing “Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing” before adding that Sharpton, who is black, “Hates Whites & Cops!”“So tired of listening to the same old Bull...Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!” Trump wrote.Trump’s diatribes ignited a...

EDINBURGH: Boris Johnson’s “hard-line” government is driving the country towards “disaster” by pushing for a no-deal Brexit, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has warned.The SNP leader spoke out as she prepared to meet the new Prime Minister, who was making his first trip to Scotland since moving into Downing Street last week.Johnson was also due to meet Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson as a divide opened up between the two.The new PM ignored Ms Davidson’s advice to keep David Mundell as Scottish Secretary, sacking him and replacing him in his Cabinet with Alister Jack.Davidson has also made plain she will not support a no-deal Brexit despite Johnson pledging to take the UK out of the European Union by October.Sturgeon stressed: “The people of Scotland did not vote for this Tory government, they didn’t vote for this new Prime Minister, they didn’t vote for Brexit and they certainly didn’t vote for a catastrophic no-deal Brexit which Boris Johnson is now planning for.”Sh...

LONDON: The pound has fallen against the US dollar to a new two-year low on Monday as markets reacted to a hardening tone from Boris Johnson’s new government over the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit.Cabinet minister Michael Gove wrote in the Sunday Times that a “no-deal is now a very real prospect” and the government is “working on the assumption” of a no-deal Brexit.New Chancellor Sajid Javid said there would be extra funding for Border Force officers and a “War Cabinet” has been created by Johnson to focus on Brexit and no-deal preparations.And new Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Monday the only way for a deal to be achieved will be if the EU changes its position. In response to the news, the pound fell 0.57 per cent against the dollar to 1.2313. Against the euro it was down 0.54 per cent to 1.1070, although the eurozone is having its own problems, with recent manufacturing data showing the sector is shrinking.Historically, the euro continues to trade at low levels compared to ...