Author: ALJAZEERA

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam – On a sunny California afternoon in late September, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh took a tour of Silicon Valley, cosying up to officials at semiconductor firms Synopsys and Nvidia. A little over a month earlier in Hanoi, Pham tasked four government ministries with increasing the number of Vietnamese engineers capable of working in semiconductor production by the tens of thousands. Government efforts to make Vietnam an attractive option for chip investment have continued in the new year. Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat last month told local media that authorities had put…

Three days of negotiations end at an impasse, as Hamas and Israel insist the other give in to their demands.Three days of negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire in Gaza have failed to achieve a breakthrough, less than a week before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – the informal deadline for a deal. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent weeks trying to broker an agreement in which Hamas would release Israeli captives in return for a six-week ceasefire, the release of some Palestinian prisoners and more aid to Gaza. Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said…

Beijing sets one of its lowest targets in decades amid property crisis, slowing exports and population decline.China has set its economic growth target for 2024 at 5 percent, far below the double-digit growth that for decades powered the world’s second-largest economy. China’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) officially unveiled the target on Tuesday as its $18 trillion economy is facing serious headwinds. “We should communicate policies to the public in a well-targeted way to create a stable, transparent and predictable policy environment,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang said as he delivered his maiden work report outlining policy goals for the year. Li…

NewsFeed‘I relive it every single day.’ A Palestinian father and UNRWA photographer returns to the place where Israeli forces killed his four-year-old daughter while following evacuation orders to flee to south Gaza.Published On 5 Mar 20245 Mar 2024 Source link

Bezos has gained $23bn in 2024, while Musk has lost $31bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.Jeff Bezos has dethroned Elon Musk to reclaim his title as the world’s richest man. The Amazon founder’s net worth currently stands at $200bn, topping the Tesla chief’s $198bn, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed on Tuesday. Bezos has gained $23bn so far in 2024, while Musk has lost about $31bn, according to the index. The billionaires’ wealth gains and losses closely tracked the stock market fortunes of Amazon and Tesla, who count their founders as their biggest shareholders. Amazon’s share price has surged by…

Use of the death penalty surged by 43 percent following huge protests prompted by Mahsa Amini’s death.Iran hanged at least 834 people in 2023, the second-highest number of executions in two decades, according to a report released by rights groups. The report, released on Tuesday by Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), suggests that the 43 percent spike in the use of capital punishment last year came in reaction to nationwide protests prompted by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022. However, while nine executions were directly linked to attacks…

Lee Hsien Loong says deal to lure pop star not ‘unfriendly’ to other countries in Southeast Asia.Singapore’s prime minister has defended striking a deal with Taylor Swift to ensure she did not perform in any other Southeast Asian country following complaints from regional neighbours. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Tuesday acknowledged for the first time that the city-state had signed an exclusivity deal with the global pop icon but denied that the arrangement was “unfriendly” to other countries in the region. “Our agencies negotiated an arrangement with her to come to Singapore and perform, and to make Singapore her…

Killings continue in Gaza as US Vice President Kamala Harris backs Israel a day after seeking a ceasefire.Here’s how things stand on Tuesday, March 5, 2024: Fighting and humanitarian crisis An Israeli air attack on a home in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Tuesday morning killed at least eight people and injured several more, the Wafa news agency reported. Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s director for Israel and Palestine, said attacks by Israeli forces on people seeking aid in Gaza were part of a “decades-long pattern” of deadly abuses against Palestinians. Using their bare hands, people have been digging…

Ex-CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives accuse Musk of believing ‘rules don’t apply to him’.Former top Twitter executives, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, have sued Elon Musk seeking more than $128m in unpaid severance. In the lawsuit filed in a San Francisco court on Monday, the four former executives accused the Tesla CEO of firing them without cause and demonstrating a “cavalier attitude” towards his financial obligations. “Under Musk’s control, Twitter has become a scofflaw, stiffing employees, landlords, vendors, and others,” the plaintiffs said in the 39-page lawsuit. “Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him,…

Vice President Kamala Harris meets Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz amid growing pressure over the US’s Gaza war stance.United States Vice President Kamala Harris has reiterated her country’s support for Israel and pushed for more humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip in talks with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz. In a readout of Monday’s meeting in Washington, DC, the White House said Harris “expressed her deep concern about the humanitarian conditions in Gaza”, a narrow Palestinian enclave that has been the subject of a deadly Israeli military offensive since October 7. The statement explained that Harris emphasised…