A THIEF tricked the staff of a downtown jewellery shop into handing him more than $140,000 worth of jewels last weekend, police said on Thursday.

The man walked away from the Raffles Jeweller in the Fullerton Hotel with a haul that included two diamond rings and a half-dozen other jewels after convincing staff he had paid for the baubles.

PARIS - MORE than a million French public sector workers staged a massive strike on Thursday, as anger at President Nicolas Sarkozy's handling of the economic crisis erupted in a day of protest.

Billed as a 'Black Thursday', the day of action failed to halt the Paris transport network, but support for the strike was significant, with 23 per cent of France's five million public sector workers downing tools.

THE $20.5 billion Resilience Package unveiled by the Government last week is more pro-worker than employees may realise for two reasons, said labour chief Lim Swee Say on Thursday.

Firstly, the Jobs Credit scheme to subsidise part of the wage bill of employers, makes Singaporeans more cost-competitive than foreign workers.

DBS chief executive Richard Stanley (left) was still busy at work till last Friday and he had finished a series of investor meetings with the bank's chief financial officer, Mrs Chng Sok Hui, to market their $4 billion rights issue.

Mr Stanley had been looking lively throughout the whole of last week and showed no signs of ill health, one banker noted. On Sunday, after a Lunar New Year reunion dinner, Mr Stanley started having a cough and was running a fever.