By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Teppei Kasai | NAMIE, Fukushima NAMIE, Fukushima A truck occasionally whizzes past the darkened shops with cracked walls and fallen signs that line the main street of Japan’s mostly deserted seaside town of Namie. Workers repair a damaged home nearby, and about 60 employees busily prepare for the return of former residents in the largely untouched town hall. Not far away, two wild […]
By Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Faced with a growing test of resolve for a new U.S. president who vowed while campaigning to get tough on North Korea, Donald Trump’s aides are pressing to complete a strategy review on how to counter Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear threats. Pyongyang’s latest missile launches and the assassination in Malaysia of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged […]
By Saikat Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG Asian stocks edged lower on Wednesday after a strong start to the week due to profit-taking as investors lacked conviction to buy risky assets before a U.S. policy meeting next week that may see interest rates rising for the second time in three months. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.1 percent in early trade, a […]
UNITED NATIONS The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday condemned North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches and expressed concern over the country’s increasingly destabilising behaviour and defiance of the 15-member body. Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan’s northwest coast on Monday, angering South Korea and Japan, days after it promised retaliation over U.S.-South Korea military drills it sees as preparation for war. The […]
Although nine years have passed since the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and Foundation announced they would be building the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island and construction has not yet started, the head of the foundation has confirmed the museum is very much a reality. Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and Foundation said: “There is progress, we are moving forward towards building it […]
07 March 2017 Geneva – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released data for global air freight markets showing that demand, measured in freight tonne kilometers (FTKs), rose 6.9% in January 2017 compared to the year-earlier period. While this was down from the 10% annual growth recorded in December 2016 it still was well above the average annual growth rate of 3% over the past five years. Growth […]
By Nichola Saminather | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Asian shares rose on Tuesday, diverging from New York markets that slipped on concern about President Donald Trump’s ability to focus on economic policies. Oil prices were slightly lower amid fears growing U.S. production will offset OPEC cuts. Futures are pointing to a positive open for Britain’s FTSE 100 .FTSE and France’s CAC 40 .FCHI. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares […]
March 7, 2017 by: Song Jung-a and Bryan Harris in Seoul and Jeevan Vasagar in Singapore North Korea’s latest missile tests were a rehearsal for an attack on US forces in Japan, Pyongyang has revealed, ratcheting up tensions with two of its sworn enemies even as relations with erstwhile ally Malaysia took a nosedive. The increasingly isolated nation on Monday launched a barrage of ballistic missiles into […]
IT services provider Empired has been awarded a contract worth AU$15 million to provide the Western Australian government with cloud services as part of the state’s GovNext-ICT project. Perth-based Empired will provide the WA government with centralised directory services, centralised identity services, and certificate authority under a consumption-based model, with the potential to scale beyond 140,000 government users based on agency take-up of the GovNext-ICT platform. The […]
Tuesday 02:00 GMT Overview Markets were in wait-and-see mode in Asia trading with investors in Australia awaiting an interest rates decision from the country’s central bank. Hot topic Tokyo’s Topix index was flat, while the Nikkei 225 index was off 0.1 per cent. Nintendo was a bright spot with its shares climbing just over 2 per cent, on track for a third straight day of gains following […]
SHANGHAI A senior Chinese nuclear power executive has said the country needs to accelerate the construction of new nuclear power plants if it is to meet targets to boost its use of nuclear energy, lower pollution and cut reliance on traditional fuel sources. He Yu, chairman of state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN) said the country needed to build between four and six nuclear reactors each […]
SEOUL North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test launches of four missiles by an army unit commissioned with attacking U.S. military bases in Japan, the country’s official news agency reported on Tuesday, stepping up threats against Washington as its troops conduct joint military exercises with South Korea. North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan’s northwest on Monday, angering South Korea and […]
Monday 21:56 GMT Overview Global equities sold off on Monday, encouraging flows into sovereign debt, after Asian markets were rattled by North Korea firing missiles into the Sea of Japan and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate meeting drew nearer. US President Donald Trump’s latest spat with the country’s security services may also be damping the mood somewhat as markets continue to price in a rate rise by […]
newslide Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars among iHeartRadio Music Award winners The 2017 iHeartRadio Music Awards started with Justin Timberlake speaking about inclusion and dedicating his award to children who feel different, and ended with a rousing performance by Bruno Mars that included crowd participation from Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, Ty Dolla $ign, Heidi Klum and more. Timberlake won the night’s first award, song of the […]
TOKYO U.S. stock futures dropped and Asian shares were on the defensive on Monday as investors weighed the near-certain prospect of an interest rate hike in the United States this month against news of slower growth in China this year. Risk appetite also took a hit on rising geopolitical tensions in East Asia, as North Korea fired four ballistic missiles early in the day, while a spat […]
March 6, 2017 by: Bryan Harris in Seoul, Kana Inagaki in Tokyo and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington North Korea fired four missiles into the Sea of Japan on Monday, according to officials in Seoul and Tokyo, in a move likely to escalate tensions that are already running high in the region. One of the currently unidentified projectiles could be an intercontinental ballistic missile, said a South Korean […]
The robots are coming. Automation, both in the form of mechanised robots (human or drone-shaped) as well as artificially intelligent software programs, are predicted to get rid of a huge number of jobs over the next five years. A report by Citibank in partnership with the University of Oxford predicted that 47 percent of US jobs are at risk of automation, 35 percent in the UK, and […]
BANGKOK Japan’s Emperor Akihito paid his respects to Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Sunday on a visit to Bangkok during which he will also see the new king. Akihito, 83, and Bhumibol, who died aged 88 in October after seven decades on the throne, had a close personal relationship that stretched back to the 1960s and strengthened ties between the two Asian monarchies. Akihito and Empress […]
China’s banking system has surpassed the eurozone’s to become the world’s largest by assets, a sign both of the country’s increased influence in world finance and its reliance on debt to drive growth since the global financial crisis. While China’s gross domestic product surpassed the EU’s economic bloc in 2011 at market exchange rates, its banking system did not take over the top spot until the end […]
Abu Dhabi’s government-owned power utility aims to close a financing package for a 3.2 billion dirham ($872 million) solar power plant, which will be the world’s largest, in April, a senior official at the utility said on Sunday. Last week, Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Authority (ADWEA) said it had selected a consortium of Japan’s Marubeni Corp and China’s JinkoSolar Holding to build and operate the 1,177 […]
Zuma arrives in Indonesia for IORA Summit and state visit TMG Digital | 2017-03-05 12:39:21.0 President Jacob Zuma arrives in Indonesia. Image by: Twitter/PresidencyZA President Jacob Zuma has arrived in Indonesia to attend the Summit of the Indian Ocean Rim Association Business Forum and Leaders’ Summit in the Asian state. He is also on a state visit to the Asian country at the invitation of President Joko […]
A historic change in party rules has handed Shinzo Abe the possibility of becoming Japan’s longest-serving prime minister in more than half a century. The revision, which would allow Mr Abe to stay in power until 2021, marks a stunning turnaround for a country long known for its revolving door of prime ministers to becoming one of the most stable governments among the group of seven leading […]
A fiber optic undersea link connecting Angola’s capital Luanda to the Brazilian city of Fortaleza is reported to be about 50 percent complete, with operations set to begin later this year. With more than 6,200 kilometers in length, SACS (South Atlantic Cable System) system will be the first fiber optic cable to connect Africa to the Americas via the South Atlantic sea. According to Angola Cables, the […]
Award-winning British artist and designer Zoe Bradley is not your average couturier. She rarely meets her clients for fittings of their gowns, her pieces are commonly only worn once, and some have been “thrown away” after use. This is because Bradley works exclusively in paper. Such is her pedigree that her clients for one-off commissions have included the likes of enigmatic Icelandic pop singer Björk and late […]
