Scotland’s finance chef quits over messages to teenager
London: Scotland’s finance minister has resigned, hours before he was due to deliver his annual budget, after he reportedly sent hundreds of messages to a 16-year-old boy on social media.
Derek Mackay quit on Thursday, saying he had “behaved foolishly”. The Scottish Sun newspaper reported that 42-year-old Mackay sent the teen more than 270 messages on Facebook and Instagram, telling the boy he was “cute” and offering to take him to a rugby match and to dinner. Mackay is not accused of breaking the law. “Serving in government has been a huge privilege and I am sorry to have let colleagues and supporters down,” Mackay said in a statement. Mackay was a rising star in the Scottish National Party, which runs Scotland’s semi-autonomous Edinburgh-based administration. He had been seen as a potential successor to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP, which advocates independence from the United Kingdom for the nation of 5.5 million. (AP)
S’pore couple livestream into own wedding amid NCoV fears
Singapore: A couple from Singapore, who had recently returned from China, livestreamed themselves into their wedding after guests expressed concerns about attending over fears of the novel coronavirus, a media report said on Thursday.
Joseph Yew and his wife Kang Ting, who is from China’s Hunan province, went to the Asian giant on January 24 to spend Lunar New Year with her family, according to the BBC report.
Hunan province borders Hubei, the province where the coronavirus originated.
Yew told the BBC that there had been no sense of panic when they were back in Hunan, especially since the area they were visiting was quite rural.
They returned on January 30, with their wedding due to take place on February 2 in Singapore.
But when guests found out the couple had just returned from China, they started to get worried.
“Some of them said they were not coming,” he told the BBC, adding: “We told the guests we would video conference in… some of them were shocked… My parents were not (happy about it) at first but they eventually agreed.”
Only 110 of 190 guests made it, including Kang’s parents as multiple travel restrictions have been put in place amid fears of the virus spreading.
As of Thursday, the coronavirus has killed 563 people in China and has spread to about two dozen countries.
Singapore has reported 28 cases of the infection so far – making it the country with the second highest number of confirmed cases of the virus outside China (28,018) after Japan (45). (IANS)