News in brief
Nepal bans solo climbers from Everest
KATHMANDU, Dec30 (AFP) - Nepal has banned solo climbers from scaling its mountains, including Mount Everest, in a bid to reduce accidents, an official said Saturday.
The cabinet late Thursday endorsed a revision to the Himalayan nation's mountaineering regulations, banning solo climbers from its mountains -one of a string of measures being flagged ahead of the 2018 spring climbing season.
“The changes have barred solo expeditions, which were allowed before,” Maheshwor Neupane, secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, told AFP. Neupane said that the law was revised to make mountaineering safer and decrease deaths.
Hong Kong ship crew questioned in S. Korea for oil transfer to North
SEOUL, Dec30 (AFP) - The crew of a Hong Kong-registered ship have been detained for questioning in South Korea since their tanker was impounded in November for transferring oil to a North Korean vessel and breaching UN sanctions, customs officials said Saturday.
The Lighthouse Winmore, which was chartered by a Taiwanese company, was impounded by South Korean customs authorities at the port of Yeosu on November 24 following an inspection.
“Since then, inspectors have been coming on board and questioning the crew”, a Korea Customs Service official told AFP.
The Lighthouse Winmore has 25 crew members including 23 mainland Chinese citizens and two Myanmar nationals, another customs official at Yeosu said.
Results of the investigation will be reported to the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, foreign ministry officials said.
Indian regulators face legal challenge in probe over prescient messages
MUMBAI, Dec 30 (Reuters) - A series of raids by India's market regulator, investigating whether corporate announcements were prematurely leaked by market participants in social media chatrooms, were the largest it has conducted.
But despite the scale of the action, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will likely face several tough legal challenges in any prosecutions, according to four lawyers, including two former officials of the regulator.
Dozens of SEBI officials raided offices and homes of brokers on Dec 22, seizing mobile phones and laptops, one regulatory source told Reuters. As many as 30 brokers were targeted in the action, according to local media.
SEBI has broad search-andseizure powers that enable it to seize “books, registers, other documents” and records of anyone associated with securities markets. But whether SEBI has legal rights to get into individual social media accounts does not appear to have been established, the lawyers said. They said they were not aware of any explicit law that gives SEBI power to access social media accounts or compel users to provide passwords. That would mean that the regulator would have to make a case that such accounts should be considered “books, registers, other documents” and records, they said.