Latest news with #Vo
New Straits Times
5 days ago
- New Straits Times
Vietnamese woman charged with trafficking 5kg of ecstasy in Johor
JOHOR BARU: A Vietnamese woman was charged in the Magistrate's Court today with trafficking more than five kilograms of drugs two weeks ago. Vo Thi Be Thu, 31, was accused of trafficking 5,286g of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) at a Persiaran Sutera Danga apartment unit at about 2pm on July 25. MDMA, also known as ecstasy, is a synthetic drug with stimulant and hallucinogenic effects. No plea was recorded as the charge, under Section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, carries the death penalty or life imprisonment. If not sentenced to death, the accused also faces no less than 15 strokes of the cane. In the same court, Vo pleaded not guilty to two other charges of possessing 20g of MDMA and nine grams of ketamine at the same location on the same date. The charges fall under Section 39A(1) and Section 12(2) of the same Act. The accused was also charged with possessing another 11g of ketamine at a different unit in the same apartment block at about 3.20pm on the same day. She pleaded not guilty and requested a trial for the charge, which was read to her in Mandarin. Deputy public prosecutors Manushri Suthakar and Siti Aishah Latif prosecuted the case. The courts set Oct 7 for mention, pending a chemistry report, and no bail was offered. The accused faces two more charges before another magistrate, but the proceedings were postponed to Aug 27 to summon a Vietnamese interpreter. The charges follow a police raid on two units of a gated and guarded apartment last Sunday, which resulted in the seizure of drugs worth over RM4.9 million and the busting of a drug trafficking syndicate led by a Vietnamese woman.
USA Today
14-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Mindset Coaching: The Hidden Driver Of Digital Business Success In 2025
Gatineau, Québec / Syndication Cloud / April 23, 2025 / Mina Vo Coaching Starting an online business gets easier every year. Tools, templates, and pre-built systems remove most technical barriers. And yet, small business data from the SBA shows that 50% of digital startups still close within two years. Money isn't the main problem. A 2023 Harvard Business Review study found that business owners who received mindset coaching and technical training were 40% more likely to stay in business beyond the two-year mark than those who only received technical support. As industrywide interest in holistic business education revives, Law of Attraction coach Mina Vo has launched her digital business development program, combining practical business training and mindset development. The program is supported by a purpose-built framework that combines branding, website setup, security, and other operational aspects. What Holds New Business Owners Back First-time business owners often freeze when deciding about introductory pricing or client outreach. This phenomenon has less to do with a lack of knowledge and can be traced to old habits from employee life getting in the way. Business coach Mina Vo sees this pattern regularly in new clients. 'Most people have the tools they need,' she notes. 'But they need help breaking through old money beliefs and work habits before those tools become useful.' Her program features three key components: step-by-step video training modules, pre-built business systems, and mindset coaching. How Support Makes a Difference Good business training in 2025 must include: Daily exercises that build decision-making confidence Regular group sessions to work through common obstacles Direct feedback on business choices Community support from other owners Practical help implementing business systems These elements work together to build both skills and confidence. Weekly group calls help owners solve problems more quickly, while daily practice helps build new habits. When you join, you'll gain access to 'done-for-you' business systems featuring pre-built marketing workflows, automated customer acquisition processes, and social media strategies. Ready-to-deploy digital infrastructure will help you quickly set up a website, generate high-quality leads, receive payments, and utilize automated email and social media marketing campaigns across channels. How It Works Through over-the-shoulder training, Mina Vo helps beginners implement this system without having to deal with the logistical and technical elements of setting up a digital business. Her mindset coaching sessions hosted on social media are based on the principles of the 'Law of Attraction.' Results That Matter Business owners who combine mindset work with technical training report 30% higher revenue in their first year, according to a 2024 Digital Business Association study. Vo's program demonstrates these benefits. Her clients often move from traditional jobs to sustainable online businesses within six months. Many, like those documented in her case studies, go on to generate consistent monthly revenue and reinvest in their communities. 'Surrounding myself with knowledgeable and supportive individuals is my source of inspiration,' says Mina Vo. 'It has positively impacted my personal and financial life, and I want the same for you. I am happy to accompany you on this journey to success and happiness.' What This Means For You Technical knowledge matters. However, mindset support turns that knowledge into actual business results. The most effective programs—like Mina Vo's holistic program—deliver both. Want to build a business that lasts? Look for training that supports both your technical and personal growth. Visit to learn how integrated coaching can help you build a successful business. Mina Vo Coaching 84 Rue des Engoulevents Gatineau Québec J8R 2X2 Canada
Hindustan Times
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Shakira accidentally helped Diljit Dosanjh carry kirpan at Met Gala; singer recalls crying just thinking about his look
Actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh made a grand debut at the Met Gala this year, turning heads with his regal presence on fashion's biggest night. In an interview with BBC Asian Network, Diljit revealed that he had tears in his eyes when he first envisioned his Met Gala outfit while sitting in his vanity van during the shoot of Sardaarji 3. He also shared an interesting anecdote about how he managed to carry his kirpan to the event, with help from none other than Shakira. Diljit Dosanjh reveals how he could carry kirpan to Met Gala red carpet because of Shakira. Diljit revealed that he was always sure that when he would walk the carpet at the Met Gala, people would only have eyes on him. He said, "I knew it jab main jaaunga toh koi aur nahi dikhega. Chahe voh mujhe kum dikhaayen lekin jab main jaaungi toh koi nhi dikhega (When I go there no one will have eyes on anyone else. Even if they show me less, but when I go no one else will be visible). I always had this belief that when I go, I'll look like a king. When I went to the Cartier showroom, I asked them, 'Will you give me that necklace. It belonged to us, and you just took it.' They had promised me then, but it was stuck in an exhibition, so it couldn't be sent. I cried when I thought of my look—that I would wear an outfit with the Punjab flag on my back and Gurmukhi script written on it. That was a very big thought for me. It wasn't important that I go there, it was important that Punjab goes there, that the turban goes there. That thought alone made me cry." Diljit Dosanjh on how he carried kirpan to Met Gala 2025 with Shakira's help He also shared an amusing anecdote about how Shakira unknowingly helped him take the kirpan to the Met Gala. Diljit recalled being told he couldn't carry the kirpan to the event, so he requested permission to at least click photos with it backstage. However, in the rush of the moment, he ended up sitting in the car with the kirpan still in his hand. Upon arrival, he was asked to hand it over, but he decided he would only do so if someone insisted. He added, "Shakira was ahead of me, and her dress had a lot of metal pins and such. No one wanted to go behind her because she's a big star, but I thought it was okay because she was in my group. So when she was going through the metal detector, it had to beep because of all the metal on her dress, and I had the Kirpan in my hand, so I just walked through with her. I thought, 'If we get caught, we both will; if not, then not.' I had the Kirpan under my cape. They checked Shakira but didn't check me." Diljit Dosanjh's Met Gala look Diljit Dosanjh stole the spotlight at the Met Gala 2025 with his regal Maharaja-inspired look. As designer Prabal Gurung's muse, he exuded royalty in an ivory sherwani paired with a matching cape, intricately embroidered with a map of Punjab and adorned with letters in Gurmukhi. He completed the powerful ensemble with a traditional turban and a kirpan, proudly representing his roots. According to Vogue, Diljit topped the list of Best Dressed celebrities at the Met Gala 2025, outshining several global A-listers.
Euronews
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Russian troop losses in Ukraine surpass the 1 million mark, Kyiv says
Russia has lost more than 1 million troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on Thursday. The figure — which reportedly comes out to 1,000,340 — includes killed, wounded or incapacitated Russian troops. According to the report, Russia has also lost 10,933 tanks, 22,786 armored fighting vehicles, 51,579 vehicles and fuel tanks, 29,063 artillery systems, 1,413 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,184 air defense systems, 416 airplanes, 337 helicopters, 40,435 drones, 3,337 cruise missiles, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine. 'The overall losses of the Russian occupying forces in manpower since the beginning of the full-scale invasion have reached 1 million,' Ukraine's General Staff stated. 'More than 628,000 occurred in just the past year and a half.' Releasing the report on Thursday, Ukraine's General Staff said that the one-million mark is not just a statistic but a symbol of resistance and resilience. 'One million. That's how much the enemy's offensive potential has diminished,' the General Staff wrote. '1 million who could have destroyed us, but whom we destroyed instead.' The statement went on to highlight the symbolic meaning behind this figure, referencing the sites of Moscow's defeats and losses in Ukraine, "in the Red Forest near Chernobyl, in the waters of the Dnipro near Antonivsky Bridge, in Donbas and Kharkiv region. And the the bottom of the Black Sea, where the cruiser Moskva sank." 'This million neutralised occupiers is our response. Our memory of Bucha, Irpin, Kupyansk, Kherson... About the bombed-out maternity hospital in Mariupol and the Okhmatdyt hospital in Kyiv destroyed by a Russian missile. About the tears of children, civilians shot dead, and destroyed homes.' Kyiv also expressed gratitude to every Ukrainian soldier who contributed to the fight, reaffirming that "every eliminated occupier is another step toward a just peace." 'Today, we've taken more than a million such steps.' the General Staff concluded. Ukraine started publicly tracking and publishing Russian losses on 1 March 2022, when the count stood at 5,710 killed and 200 captured. Ever since, the losses have been increasing every year. In 2022, Russia lost 106,720 troops, averaging 340 per day, according to the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces. In 2023, the losses more than doubled to an average of 693 per day and 253,290 troops. In 2024, daily losses crossed the 1,000 threshold and totalled at 430,790 troops. This year, Russia has been losing on average 1,286 troops per day. Ukraine's General Staff numbers are in line with the estimates of Ukraine's western allies. At the beginning of April, Deutsche Welle reported that according to a senior NATO official Russia's losses surpassed 900,000 troops, including 250,000 deaths, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Ukraine and Russia do not publicly disclose their losses. In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the battlefield since early 2022. He also said nearly 380,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been injured and "tens of thousands" remained either "missing in action" or being held in Russian captivity. Russia's plan in its ongoing all-out war on Ukraine is to take Odesa and continue to Moldova and Romania, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told southeastern European leaders at a summit in the Black Sea port city on Wednesday. 'Russia's war plans target this region, Odesa. Then they are targeting the borders with Moldova and Romania. Of course, we need protection now. But above all, we need long-term guarantees that these can never happen again," he emphasised. The summit, attended by Ukraine, Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Albania, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia, brought together countries, some of which have already been targeted by Moscow's hybrid warfare. Moldova's President Maia Sandu has warned of the dangers of hybrid warfare aimed at influencing the country's parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall. 'We do learn everyday by new attempts and new ways through which Russia tries to interfere with our internal political processes, democratic processes," Sandu said. "It is going to be tough, but we do want Moldovans to decide for Moldova at the parliamentary elections, and not the Kremlin." Through its actions, the Kremlin is threatening peace across the continent, while sabotaging efforts to reach a lasting peace in Ukraine, participants pointed out. 'Russia constantly rejects any constructive initiative and strives to undermine the path to peace," Romanian President Nicușor Dan, who was on his first official visit to Ukraine after winning the dramatic elections in May, said at the summit. "Russia proposes unreasonable demands, knowing that they cannot be accepted. The only language Russia understands is the language of force and we must do our utmost to help Ukraine negotiate from a position of strength.' Both Dan and Sandu have recently been targeted by disinformation campaigns on pro-Russian Telegram channels, as revealed by Euronews and Euroverify. Meanwhile, Odesa was again in the Russian forces' crosshairs in the run-up to the summit. Euronews Romania journalists have visited the Black Sea port city districts destroyed by Moscow's massive bombing in recent days. The extent of the destruction is significant: buildings in ruins, burned cars and people who no longer have a home. Every night, people are woken up by airstrikes and the long sound of sirens. The most terrifying, people say, is the noise of drones or missiles overhead. Kateryna, 32, witnessed the bombings in recent nights. The apartment she lives in, together with her mother, was hit by drones launched by the Russians. Everything was reduced to ashes. "This is the first time our home was bombed. My mother was sleeping in my room, and when the first Shahed drone came, she ran away and hid in the basement. The first strike was right in the room she ran from," Kateryna told Euronews. Earlier this week, at least two people died and 9 were injured in a missile and drone attack that also struck a maternity hospital and another medical facility, and the city's film studio and zoo. Odesa is of strategic importance to Ukraine, serving as one of the primary logistical channels for both the export and import of goods needed by the country, which has been affected by Russia's ongoing full-scale aggression.
Business Insider
04-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The Palantir job that grows startup founders
Palantir, the government-focused software giant run by Alex Karp, has emerged as one of tech's biggest talent factories. One role in particular, the Forward Deployed Software Engineer, is churning out our startup founders. Many Palantir alumni -turned-founders got their start in the role at the company — like Trae Stephens and Matt Grimm, two members of defense tech giant Anduril's founding team. When she was a college student at Harvard University, Lisa Vo wasn't interested in typical software engineering internships and jobs where she'd spend her time writing backend code in a quiet office. A position as a Palantir Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE), however, promised her something different. During her time as an FDSE and intern at Palantir, Vo worked directly with the company's clients and enjoyed a high level of autonomy when trying out different solutions and settling on the best possible fix. She said the job gave her a rare experience in software engineering: the chance to interact directly with people and make an impact. "For someone who enjoys software engineering not just as a practice but as a tool to work on interesting problems and to be able to make an impact, that was a perfect training because you got to marry the very fast-paced, evolving priorities of working for a client, with working on interesting and ever-changing issues," she told Business Insider. Vo spent just over a year total at Palantir before quitting to become a founder, and she's launched five startups since 2019. Her latest project, a dating app called LoveJack, where users select five words, launched in London in May with pre-seed funding from Harvard AI Institute founder Karim Lakhani. Vo said that being a FDSE fast-tracked the skills she needed to learn to run a startup successfully. "It's definitely founder preparation bootcamp," she said. "As a founder, you have to talk to investors, land partnerships, and be outward-facing, but you also have to put your head down, build a product, code, and be inward-facing. It's the same dynamic with being a Forward Deployed Engineer." On the computer and on the front lines Like any other company, Palantir has traditional software engineers who work behind the scenes on product development and infrastructure — they're referred to as "Devs." But Forward Deployed Software Engineers —also known internally as "Deltas" — are meant to be the tip of the spear. In addition to using their computer engineering skills, they embed directly with Palantir's clients — which means government agencies like ICE and the U.S. Army as well as large companies including United Airlines and General Mills — to implement and adapt Palantir's software and tools in real time. "You're there to engage with a hard problem and solve it with deep customer empathy and lots of ingenuity," said Barry McCardel, a former FDSE who went on to co-found the data workspace startup Hex with two other Palantir alums, one of whom was also a FDSE. McCardel told Business Insider that when embedding with a client, FDSEs were expected to iterate quickly and find creative ways to solve problems. "That dynamic is what you ended up doing when you're creating a new product as a founder," he said. "So many of the things you worked on didn't work, but that was okay, which is similar to the venture and startup mindset." Palantir's practice of embedding engineers directly with clients to solve problems eventually evolved into a core company ethos known as "Forward Deployed" — which essentially prioritizes speed and efficiency, taking definitive action, and working hand-in-hand with clients to see and solve problems up close. Although Forward Deployed Software Engineers are perhaps the most well known, Palantir has other forward-deployed teams throughout the organization, including a Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineering team, also known as the Baseline team, that embeds with clients to provide support for the products FDSEs build. Gary Lin, co-founder and CEO of enterprise startup Explo, worked as an FDSE at Palantir from 2017 to 2019. He described the job as one where you needed to "move fast and break things" in order to succeed — and that it wasn't always important to have a perfect, polished solution in order to succeed. You just needed to give your client something that worked well, quickly, he said. "Our goal was, 'What does it take to win with respect to the client?'," he said. "We were building faster to meet timelines, and that made our priorities slightly different." From Forward Deployed to founder Representatives for Palantir did not respond to a request for comment for this story, so it's unclear exactly how many FDSEs the company has hired since the firm was founded in 2003 or how many currently work there. There are around 700 LinkedIn profiles that list themselves as founders and say that Palantir was their former employer. For Lin, being embedded with clients gave engineers a chance to practice translating vague customer feedback into workable software, which is a skill that's proven essential in his current role leading a startup. "Forward Deployed Engineers will actually build software themselves and parse signal to noise what a customer is saying and figure out what's doable and reasonable," he said. "The exposure they get to the business side teaches you the tradeoffs between business development and product development, and as a founder you lean when it's okay to cut corners from an engineering perspective, and vice versa." Eliot Hodges, CEO at fintech startup Anduin, was an FDSE from 2012-2014. He remembers a relentless focus on outcome and impact for the client, and those values have stuck with him more than a decade later, now that he's running a startup of his own. "The idea was to bring in really ambitious, smart grads out of college and set them loose to be entrepreneurial, technical people to go out and pursue their own hypotheses," he said, adding that unlike a traditional role at a consulting firm, forward deployed engineers had to have not only top engineering chops, but also the expectation to set up a solution — rather than just make a recommendation. "Why go to McKinsey spending weeks building a deck that's not going to change an outcome and move the needle and might just sit on someone's desk?"
