World

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...

:Ford Motor Co on Wednesday will announce a reorganization under which its electric vehicle (EV) and internal-combustion engine (ICE) units will be run as separate businesses in a move to fast track growth in EVs, three people familiar with the plan said. The EV and ICE businesses will have separate names but will remain under the Ford corporate umbrella, in the same way the company operates its Ford Pro commercial business for corporate customers, said the people, who asked not to be identified. The U.S. automaker will name executives to lead each business and Ford will also outline updated profit margin targets for the company overall, the sources said. The idea is for Ford to eventually report separate financial results for the EV and ICE businesses, one of the sources said. Ford spo...

Before recent increased DEI efforts led companies to directly partner with schools, many HBCU students struggled to find job opportunities that aligned with their career goals. It's an experience that Bilal Issifou knows well — after finding himself at an internship he wasn't passionate about, the North Carolina A&T alumnus launched his tech-based start-up Unchained Inc., which has helped hundreds of HBCU students and graduates get jobs and internships at Fortune 500 companies. Native to Togo, West Africa, Issifou came to the U.S. at age 5. His parents instilled hard work and education in him at an early age, which prompted him to pursue pre-law in undergrad. Being on campus helped him hone in on his networking, communication and interpersonal skills, which Issifou says was "critical to hi...

SINGAPORE: Students and graduates of polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) will get more support to clinch technology-related jobs amid a fast-growing digital economy, said Minister of State for Communications and Information Tan Kiat How on Friday (Mar 4). “We will put in place a structured, end-to-end approach to better support our polytechnic and ITE students, starting with 1,000 places over the next 3 years,” he announced during his ministry’s Committee of Supply debate. A TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) for ITEs and Polytechnics (TIP) Alliance comprising leading tech firms and major hirers will be formed by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). The latest move comes after some polytechnic and ITE graduates from Information and Digital Technologies (ID...

The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank said it will suspend business related to Russia and Belarus in a sign of the two countries’ deepening pariah status over the war in Ukraine. In a statement issued Thursday, the AIIB said that “in the best interests of the bank, management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review.” China, whose bilateral relationship with Russia has strengthened in recent years, has thus far avoided criticizing Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing is the largest stakeholder in the multilateral institution — the brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping — with almost 27% voting power. The bank was launched in 2016 to counter the West’s dominance of the World Bank and the International Monetar...