World

Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched an attack on Ukraine. What began as a limited incursion by Russia’s armed forces is now a full-scale invasion. Western intelligence agencies and various European leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have for several weeks warned that the hostilities could eventually become the largest conflict on the continent since World War II. Most of the impact will be felt in Europe, even if the war widens. NATO will likely expand defense spending. Russia will be heavily sanctioned and increasingly isolated from the world economy. In East Asia, however, the immediate fallout of Russian aggression will be minor. Russia itself is geopolitically weak in the region. Only a fifth of its population lives in the vast Siberian space between ...

Japan plans to hold onto its investments in major Russian energy projects for now, according to people with knowledge of the matter, despite ongoing aggression in Ukraine and a high-profile exit by Big Oil. Unless the situation with Russia drastically changes, Japanese companies and consortia have decided keep their stakes in Sakhalin 1, Sakhalin 2 and Arctic LNG 2 projects, according to people at the firms and government officials. Russian oil and liquefied natural gas export projects are geographically closest to Japan and are strategically important for the resource-poor Asian nation, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private details. BP PLC, Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp. shocked the energy industry when they walked away from Russian assets worth billions of dollar...

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., March 1, 2022. It's highly likely that energy prices will remain elevated for some time to come. If only the halt of that project was the sole source of surging energy costs at home and abroad. The pipeline was expected to carry some 830,000 barrels per day of oil from Canada to the U.S. She's criticizing President Joe Biden for halting the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline , claiming that the loss of that pipeline is keeping America from being energy independent. South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, has been tweeting that we need to make America energy independent again. Certainly at least until the war in Ukraine comes to an end, pandemic-related supply chain issues are resolved and both U.S...

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Disney made headlines last week when it raised ticket prices for its Orlando, Florida-based theme park. Visitors planning an extended trip to Walt Disney World Resort will pay between 2% and 6% more if they spend more than four days at the parks. Four-day multiday passes used to range from $435 to $597, depending on if the ticket was for a child or an adult, CNBC reported. Now, those passes cost between $447 and $597. It's a far cry from the price of admission when the Magic Kingdom first opened its gates in 1971, charging $3.50 a day for adults and $1 for children. Adjusted for inflation, those ticket prices would be around $24 and just under $7 in 2022, respectively. Of course, the Disney of 2022 is unrecognizable from its past incarnation. The corporation doesn't only own Pixar and E...

China’s concern that the U.S. is seeking to build an “Indo-Pacific version of NATO” has one major problem: A previous effort failed in the 1970s, and most Asian countries haven’t been interested in trying again. China Foreign Minister Wang Yi raised eyebrows on Monday when he accused the U.S. of looking to form a NATO-style military alliance “to maintain the U.S.-led system of hegemony.” The charge echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine, raising questions about whether Beijing may one day take similar preemptive military action in the region. But as European nations become increasingly open to joining the U.S.-led military alliance, Asian governments that don’t already have mutual defense treaties with America have been reluctant to get too close. Ma...

HONG KONG: Hong Kong on Friday (Mar 4) announced it would suspend court services for a month as the city recorded more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day. The finance hub is in the throes of its worst outbreak to date, overwhelming hospitals and shattering the city's zero-COVID strategy. The judiciary said it would adjourn most hearings between Mar 7 and Apr 11 after "striking a balance between public health considerations and due administration of justice". Authorities said on Wednesday around 1,000 prisoners have tested positive and local media reported that judges had also been infected. The suspension excludes ongoing hearings and urgent applications while some in-person proceedings will be dealt with on paper instead. The judiciary added that it may n...

Faced with Russia’s authoritarian kleptocracy to their north and east, Ukrainians — off and on, and with periodic mass uprisings — have chosen a very different political path in recent decades. Through several cycles of elections and popular protest, Ukraine has moved toward the democratic ideals of the rule of law, protection of individual liberties, freedom of expression and association, free and fair elections, and the peaceful resolution of internal conflicts. Today, international organizations classify Ukraine as a less-than-full — but aspiring — democracy. Russia and Ukraine’s divergent paths — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ever-tightening dictatorship versus Ukraine’s sometimes-chaotic open society — made the Kremlin’s recent invasion more likely. One of the key differences ...

The U.S. has told allies that any Russian invasion of Ukraine would potentially see it target multiple cities beyond the capital Kyiv, according to three people familiar with the matter. Cities that could also come under attack include Kharkiv in the northeast and Odessa and Kherson in the south, said the people, all Western officials who asked not to be identified talking about such sensitive matters. They did not provide details on the intelligence they said underlined these calculations. The U.S. view is shaped in part by granular insight into the types of Russian forces and capabilities currently near Ukraine, as well as how they might be prepared to act from multiple locations, the officials said. They did not specify what a potential attack might include, or comment on what Russian...

China projected defense spending growth of 7.1% this year, the fastest pace since 2019 as President Joe Biden moves to strengthen the United States’ position in the Indo-Pacific region. Military expenditure is expected to rise to 1.45 trillion yuan ($229 billion) in the coming year. The figure was released Saturday in the Ministry of Finance’s annual report at the start of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. A Bloomberg calculation of the latest numbers shows spending for this year will actually rise 7%. “Government at all levels must give strong support to the development of national defense and the armed forces, so unity between the military and government and between the military and the people will remain rock solid,” Premier Li Keqiang said in the government’s annual work rep...