World

Since October, Facebook has renamed the company, articulated a vision of the internet where people can digitally connect through virtual-reality avatars or teleport to see places like ancient Rome, and helped trigger the metaverse investment craze. When the company, now Meta Platforms Inc, reports fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, investors will get a new window into the financial impact of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's current passion. Meta plans to break out the results of its augmented and virtual-reality hardware unit, Reality Labs, for the first time, an investment the company previously warned would cause a $10 billion hit to 2021 profit and would not be profitable "any time in the near future." The company is hiring engineers and buying up multiple virtual reality gaming studios to bu...

People wearing face masks at a supermarket in Suva, Fiji, April 23, 2021. Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images Countries all over the world have seen Covid-19 cases surge since the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant, with new infections soaring by 20% globally over the past week. In the Pacific Islands, however, it's been a different story. Many of the small island states nestled in the Pacific Ocean have had no new cases of the virus for months — and some of those countries have remained virtually Covid-free throughout the pandemic. As of Tuesday, Tonga, Samoa, Wallis and Futuna, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Vanuatu and the Cook Islands had no active cases of the virus, according to figures from Our World in Data. Maintaining a long-term state of zero Covid...

The world's biggest central banks, moving in tandem at the height of the pandemic, are set to tighten policy at vastly different speeds, likely increasing economic and market volatility this year, top policymakers said on Friday. Central banks unleashed unprecedented stimulus in recent years to prop up growth but excessive cash has now pushed inflation to multi-decade highs around much of the world, raising fears that policymakers are falling behind the curve. The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to lead the way, hiking rates possibly as soon as next week, while the Bank of Japan, sitting at the other end of the spectrum, is likely to keep policy exceptionally loose for years to come. “The issue here is that what the Fed does, has implications for the U.S., it has implications for other c...

CAIRO: The United Arab Emirates said on Monday (Jan 31) it had intercepted a ballistic missile that was fired by Yemen's Houthi as the Gulf state hosted Israel's President Isaac Herzog in a first such visit. The Emirati defence ministry said the missile was intercepted and destroyed, adding that its debris fell on an uninhabited area. It did not say whether the missile was targeting the UAE's capital Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the Middle East's business and tourism hub. The UAE civil aviation authority said air traffic in the Gulf country was going as usual and all flights operations were operating normally despite the attack, the state news agency (WAM) reported. The UAE is part of a Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen in a seven-year-old conflict that has killed te...

NEW DELHI : A full-fledged women's Indian Premier League (IPL) could begin as early as next year, with the Indian cricket board (BCCI) saying it is working on delivering the tournament "soon". A three-team Women's T20 Challenge is staged alongside the men's IPL, but many believe https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/ipl-next-big-step-grow-womens-game-says-nz-captain-devine-2021-12-21 women deserve their own expanded tournament with more teams and players. The Women's T20 Challenge will continue this year, but BCCI secretary Jay Shah said things would change soon. "I want to assure you that BCCI is not only sincere but is taking all necessary steps to start a full-fledged women's league similar to the IPL soon," Shah told Reuters in an email. "The huge interest among fans and players...

GENEVA: A WTO panel on Tuesday (Feb 8) upheld many of South Korea's claims against the United States in a Trump-era dispute involving US safeguard measures on washing machine imports and asked Washington to bring those measures into line with global rules. The case involves tariffs that former US President Donald Trump imposed in 2018 on washing machine imports, as part of his "America First" trade push. The measures were designed to shield Whirlpool Corp and other US appliance manufacturers from a surge in imports, mainly from South Korean rivals Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. The two Korean firms filed a complaint to the World Trade Organization the same year, claiming the so-called "safeguard measures" discriminated between products originating in South Korea and comparable ...

General Motors Co said on Tuesday (Jan 25) it will invest US$7 billion in Michigan, much of that aimed at dramatically boosting production of full-size electric pickups, intensifying a battle with rival Ford Motor Co for EV supremacy in North America. Both US automakers, however, will have to contend with current leader Tesla, which will soon open a second US plant in Austin, Texas, and is on pace to sell more than 1 million electric vehicles globally in 2022. GM said its Detroit-Hamtramck and Orion Township plants will be able to build more than 600,000 electric trucks a year by late 2024, with three other plants in Tennessee, Ontario and Mexico boosting the company's total North America EV production capacity to more than a million units by late 2025. In January, Ford said it will hav...

SINGAPORE: In 2003, after his accomplices for housebreaking and theft had been arrested, a man fled to Malaysia and remained there at large for 14 years. Haron Ismail, 62, returned to Singapore to surrender himself in 2017 and was sentenced to four years and nine months' jail for his crimes on Friday (Jan 14). He told the court that he had "no peace of mind" in Malaysia and that "the guilt has been disturbing me". Haron pleaded guilty to three charges of housebreaking to commit theft and housebreaking by night to commit theft, with another three charges considered in sentencing. The court heard that Haron was associated with two co-accused men Abdul Karim Mohamed and Rusli Awang. On Nov 24, 2002, the three men went to Yen San building in 268 Orchard Road to break into offices and stea...

NEW DELHI :Indian retailer Reliance has called for tighter regulation of marketplace e-commerce platforms to ensure such websites treat all sellers equally, four sources told Reuters. While India's biggest retailer, with more than 12,000 stores, expanded its e-commerce operations in recent years, Reliance still lags market leaders Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart, both of which it counts as key rivals. At a closed-door government meeting on Tuesday, Reliance told officials that India needed special regulations to ensure "non-discriminatory" treatment of sellers on marketplace websites, three of the sources with knowledge of the talks said. Reliance did not name any company, the sources added, although its remarks chime with calls for greater regulatory oversight in India of ecommerce giant...

TOKYO: Japan upgraded its view on production for the first time in over a year in a January report, while signalling imminent risks that COVID-19's Omicron variant outbreak could cool down the economy's budding consumption-led recovery. Analysts in the latest Reuters poll have trimmed their forecast for Japan's gross domestic product in January-March, although some say the depth of Omicron's impact remains unclear and depends on the severity of government-imposed curbs to come. "The economy shows movements of pick-up as severe conditions due to the coronavirus are gradually easing," the government said in the monthly report approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's cabinet on Tuesday (Jan 18). The report however listed the COVID-19 outbreak as a downside risk to the economy that requir...