There is much going against South Korea right now, including an anaemic economy, a series of failures in the country’s shipbuilding sector, Chinese boycotts and North Korean belligerence. And yet the country’s stock market keeps hitting records. The Kospi, the Korea’s main equities benchmark, set a record high last week and is up 13 per cent in the year to date, making it one of Asia’s best-performing major markets of 2017. […]
Credit: Steffen Thoma/Public Domain The research, led by the International Council on Clean Transportation and Environmental Health Analytics, LLC., in collaboration with scientists at the University of York’s Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); University of Colorado; and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, examined 11 major vehicle markets representing more than 80% of new diesel vehicle sales in 2015.’ Of these markets, they found vehicles emitted 13.2 […]
By Guy Faulconbridge and Dustin Volz | LONDON/WASHINGTON LONDON/WASHINGTON The global WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack spread more slowly on Monday with no major infections reported, as attention shifted to investment and government policy implications of lax cyber security. There were 213,000 infected machines in 112 countries as of 1000 GMT on Monday, according to Czech security firm Avast, making it one of the largest coordinated attacks to […]
Asia Pacific The Philippines has been forced to turn to China and Russia for arms supplies because of conditions imposed by its long-time ally and former colonial ruler the United States, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana speaks during the opening ceremony of Philippines and U.S. military joint exercises called Balikatan in Quezon city MANILA: The Philippines has been […]
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation, With Moon Jae-In’s victory in South Korea, the period of tension on the Korean Peninsula is likely to end. With the rise to power of the new president, South Korea can expect a sharp decline in hostilities with North Korea as well as a resumption of dialogue with China. An expected and highly anticipated victory was confirmed in South Korea on […]
By Jeremy Wagstaff and Dustin Volz | SINGAPORE/WASHINGTON SINGAPORE/WASHINGTON Asian governments and businesses reported some disruptions from the WannaCry ransomware worm on Monday but cybersecurity experts warned of a wider impact as more employees turned on their computers and checked e-mails. The ransomware that has locked up more than 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries has been mainly spread by e-mail, hitting factories, hospitals, shops and […]
MANILA Philippine lawmakers started hearing an impeachment complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday, which alleges he betrayed the public trust over his “defeatist” approach to China and had abused his power during a bloody anti-drugs campaign. The complaint by Gary Alejano, a member of a minority block, accuses Duterte of a litany of “high crimes”, including hiding wealth, ordering police to murder criminals, and of making […]
Asia Pacific Philippine lawmakers started hearing an impeachment complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday, which alleges he betrayed the public trust over his “defeatist” approach to China and had abused his power during a bloody anti-drugs campaign. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte attends the opening plenary of the World Economic Forum on ASEAN at a hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Samrang Pring MANILA: Philippine […]
Singapore, one of the most urbanised nations on earth, is making land available for agriculture for the first time in decades for farmers to come up with high-tech ways of improving the city-state’s food security. About 60 hectares of land will be released for farming from August, in a move authorities describe as providing a “buffer” against disruption in the supply chain. Singapore is the third most […]
By Benjamin Kang Lim | BEIJING BEIJING China and the Philippines will start bilateral consultations on the disputed South China Sea this week, the Philippine ambassador to Beijing said, as Manila looks to ease tensions with Asia’s top economic power. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is visiting Beijing this weekend to attend a summit on China’s new Silk Road plan, has opted to court China for its […]
While equity volatility has collapsed to record lows (amid the biggest increase in net VIX shorts in 9 months), positioning across bond, FX, money market, and commodity markets has been shifting massively in recent weeks. As US Macro data has crashed to its weakest and most negative in 12 months… US equity complacency has hit record lows… As Speculators add to VIX shorts by the […]
By Michael Martina and Christian Shepherd | BEIJING BEIJING North Korea kept a low profile at the opening of a summit in Beijing on China’s new Silk Road plan on Sunday, after the United States warned China Pyongyang’s attendance could affect the participation of other countries. North Korea’s attendance at China’s biggest diplomatic event this year raised further eyebrows after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile early on […]
President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya has called on China to rebalance an increasingly skewed trade relationship between Africa and the rising superpower, arguing that Beijing must do more to tackle a widening trade deficit. Africa’s trade balance with China has moved decisively into deficit due to a fall in the price of many African commodities, such as oil, copper, iron ore and cocoa. In 2015, the most […]
In this May 12, 2017 photo, a display panel with an error can be seen at the main railway station in Chemnitz, Germany. Germany’s national railway says that it was among the organizations affected by the global cyberattack but there was no impact on train services. Deutsche Bahn said early Saturday that departure and arrival display screens at its stations were hit Friday night by the attack. […]
By Benjamin Kang Lim | BEIJING BEIJING China and the Philippines will start bilateral consultations on the disputed South China Sea this week, the Philippine ambassador to Beijing said, as Manila looks to ease tensions with Asia’s top economic power. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is visiting Beijing to attend a summit on China’s ambitious new Silk Road plan, has opted to court China for its business […]
By Ayesha Rascoe and Michael Martina | WASHINGTON/BEIJING WASHINGTON/BEIJING The United States and China have agreed to take action by mid-July to increase access for U.S. financial firms and expand trade in beef and chicken among other steps as part of Washington’s drive to cut its trade deficit with Beijing. The deals are the first results of 100 days of trade talks that began last month, when […]
North Korea’s conducted its latest weapons test on Sunday, presenting South Korea’s Moon Jae-in with his first foreign policy challenge and raising fears that Pyongyang may have developed a new kind of missile. Japan’s defence minister said the missile had reached an altitude of 2,000km on its 700km journey, potentially indicating a new type of rocket. David Wright, a physicist and missile expert, wrote on the All […]
Authored by Paul Criag Roberts, “Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me one thing: If a fight is inevitable, you must strike first.” Vladimir Putin In George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, 1984, information that no longer is consistent with Big Brother’s explanations is chucked down the Memory Hole. In the real American dystopia in which we currently live, the information is never reported at all. […]
By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim | SEOUL SEOUL North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Sunday in defiance of calls to rein in its weapons programme, South Korean and U.S. officials said, days after a new leader took office in the South, pledging to engage it in dialogue. The U.S. Pacific Command said it was assessing the type of missile but it was “not consistent with […]
By Jeremy Wagstaff | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Some hospitals, schools and universities in Asia were hit by a global cyber attack which infected tens of thousands of computers in Europe and the United States, but officials and researchers said the extent of any damage may not yet be known. China’s official news agency Xinhua said secondary schools and universities were hit, but did not say how many or […]
By Kay Johnson | ISLAMABAD ISLAMABAD Pakistan signed new deals with China on Saturday worth nearly $500 million ahead of Beijing’s international forum on its “Silk Road” trade and infrastructure initiative for Asia, Africa and Europe, the Pakistani government said. The memorandums of understanding add to $57 billion already pledged for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a network of rail, road and energy infrastructure that is part […]
Nearly 70 years after he produced Hong Kong’s first plastic duck, toy industry veteran LT Lam’s factories in China now churn out everything from Transformers to Play-Doh. But with costs rising in China and the industry fragmenting because of technological advances and changing consumer tastes, the 93-year-old worries that Hong Kong could lose its decades-long role at the heart of the global toy industry. “We started with […]
By Gul Yusufzai | QUETTA, Pakistan QUETTA, Pakistan Ten labourers were gunned down in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday while working on link roads to connect outlying towns to the country’s $57-billion Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative, security officials confirmed. The attack on the Pakistani labourers took place some 20 kilometres from the emerging port city of Gwadar in Baluchistan province that forms the southern hub of the […]
By Ben Blanchard | BEIJING BEIJING China welcomes all countries to participate in this weekend’s forum on China’s new Silk Road plan, the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, after the United States warned China that North Korea’s attendance could affect other countries’ participation. Two sources with knowledge of the situation said the U.S. embassy in Beijing had submitted a diplomatic note to China’s foreign ministry, saying that […]
