TOKYO (BLOOMBERG) – With Japan’s fourth state of emergency extended yet again, growing numbers of the bars and restaurants that have borne the brunt of curfews say they can no longer afford to comply. Some are simply fed up. “I feel the government is bullying us,” says one Tokyo pub owner, Mr Yuka Fujishima, who […]
TOKYO (REUTERS) – Japan’s popular vaccination minister Taro Kono is set to announce his candidacy on Friday (Sept 10) for leader of the country’s ruling political party and, by extension, its next prime minister. Mr Kono’s decision to throw his hat in the ring for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), left open […]
SINGAPORE – For the past year and a half, shopkeepers in Little India have been hit hard by a drastic fall in income as migrant workers who would throng the area on weekends were confined to their dormitories as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Crowds of more than 200,000 workers on a typical pre-pandemic […]
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Canadian economy is moving closer to a point where the Bank of Canada will no longer need to continue adding stimulus through its quantitative easing (QE) program, but it is not there yet, Governor Tiff Macklem said on Thursday.FILE PHOTO: Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem arrives to a news conference […]
TOKYO – The difficult decision not to lift a state of emergency for Covid-19 apparently weighed heavily on outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who last week announced that he would not run for re-election in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election. Mr Suga had hoped to lift the restrictions as planned on Sunday (Sept […]
N’DJAMENA (Reuters) – Unable to honour debt commitments, authorities in Chad are hoping for a “favourable opinion” from Glencore Plc on restructuring the country’s commercial debt under the G20 framework, said Prime Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke.FILE PHOTO: Chad’s Prime Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke poses before the opening session of the Summit on the Financing of […]
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Taliban was businesslike, “professional” and cooperative in facilitating the latest evacuation of US nationals from Afghanistan, the White House said on Thursday (Sept 9). The departure from Kabul to Doha on a chartered Qatar Airways flight on Thursday marked “a positive first step,” National Security Council spokesman Emily Horne said. “The […]
The pandemic is causing lasting damage to the education of children across South Asia, more than 400 million of whom are still facing school closures and limited access to remote learning, the United Nations said on Thursday. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, called on governments to “prioritize the safe reopening of all schools” before […]
SINGAPORE – It makes less sense to differentiate between linked and unlinked Covid-19 cases as Singapore moves to treating the disease as endemic, and shifting the focus from this means resources can be better used elsewhere, public health and infectious disease experts said following the Ministry of Health’s announcement that it would stop publicising the […]
Several passenger jets arrived on Thursday morning in Kabul as Taliban officials said that American passport holders and other foreigners would soon be able to fly out of the international airport there, the first passenger flights to leave Afghanistan since the frenzied U.S. military evacuation drew to a close late last month. A U.S. official […]