Tuesday, Dec 16th
Last update09:33:48 AM GMT
International Glance
The firm at the heart of the Paradise Papers leak provided offshore services to a bank accused of facilitating terrorist financing, transnational organised crime and the Syrian government’s chemical weapons programme.
Appleby represented the Cayman Islands holding company of FBME Bank for at least a year after the US Treasury published an extraordinary roster of allegations against the bank, and acted as its agent for more than a decade beforehand.
North Korea agreed during rare talks on Monday to send a 140-strong orchestra to perform during the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, Seoul said, amid easing tensions after a months-long standoff over the North’s weapons programs.
Officials from the two Koreas, technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, met on the North side of the border truce village of Panmunjom to discuss North Korea sending performers - for the first time in 18 years - to the Olympics in Pyeongchang.
In Indonesia, a local government plans to build a road to shorten the drive between the main airport on the island of Bali and the new high-end Trump resort and golf course.
In Panama, the country’s federal government intervened to ensure a sewer system around a 70-story Trump skyscraper shaped like a sail in Panama City would be completed.
More than 100 people have been killed and scores are missing in southern Philippines after Tropical Storm Tembin triggered mud slides and flash floods.
The storm hit the country's second largest island, Mindanao, on Friday, bringing torrential rain and winds of 80 kilometres per hour.
"We're really on our toes right now," Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippines Red Cross told Al Jazeera on Saturday. "And we're trying to figure out how to give help to so many people that are really in danger right now."
The stellar career of world-renowned conductor Charles Dutoit has come crashing down in the wake of sexual assault accusations by three singers and a musician. Symphonies from Boston to Sydney have severed ties with the maestro, and he has cancelled guest appearances with other major orchestras.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, where the 81-year-old Dutoit is artistic director and principal conductor, issued a statement early Friday saying the symphony and Dutoit "have jointly agreed to release him from his forthcoming concert obligations with the orchestra for the immediate future."
At least 12 people died and several more were injured after a bus carrying cruise ship passengers flipped over on a highway in eastern Mexico early Tuesday, officials said.
Seven Americans and two Swedish citizens are among the nearly two dozen injured, according to Vincente Martin, the civil defense spokesman for Quintana Roo state. Authorities have not yet been able to ascertain the nationalities of the dead, Martin added.
The Federal Cartel Office said its investigation of Facebook reached the preliminary conclusion that the company has a dominant position in the market for social networking sites in Germany.
Further, it said that Facebook is "acting abusively" by only allowing people to use its social network if they consent to the collection of all types of user data from third party sites and subsidiaries such as WhatsApp or Instagram.
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