World

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...

BEIJING :China's central government has issued a series on opinions aimed at better cracking down on monopolies, unfair competition, and user data issues in China's sprawling internet platform economy. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) published a policy document on its website that called for the revision of legislation relating to monopolies and data security in data-driven online platforms, as well as stronger supervision over areas such as advertising and tax reporting. "Platform operators must not use data, technology, market, or capital advantages to restrict the independent operation of other platforms and applications," read one of nineteen opinions included in the document, which was jointly written with several other central government ministries and regulat...

U.S. President Joe Biden plans to make several stops during a visit to Asia this spring, which will be his first to the region as president and include a summit in Japan with three key regional allies, a senior administration official said. The official brushed off questions about whether the Ukraine crisis could distract the administration’s attention from Asia, saying: “We continue prioritizing our Indo-Pacific focus and will have more to come.” The official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, declined to give details of the other stops in the region, which the Biden administration has declared a priority as it seeks to push back against China’s expanding power and influence. U.S. officials have said Biden has accepted an invitation to visit Japan in late spring to atten...

NEW DELHI: At the age of four, Arif Mohammad Khan put on skis for the first time, just a few kilometres from the Line of Control that divides the disputed, conflict-ridden region of Kashmir. It was to be the start of a difficult journey that will culminate in him being the only athlete from India, a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, when the Beijing Winter Olympics begin on Friday (Feb 4). Skiing is in the family. Arif's father runs a ski shop and tour company in Gulmarg in Indian-administered Kashmir, one of the world's highest ski resorts that offers the chance to ski deep, fresh powder. It is reachable only by helicopter, and the Himalayan views are breathtaking. But the Muslim-majority region has been split between India and Pakistan since independence in 1947, with the nuclear...

TOKYO : A surge in deposits caused by the government's huge cash payouts is straining some Japanese lenders, complicating the central bank's efforts to mitigate the side-effects of its negative interest rate policy. Industry leader MUFG Bank was charged negative rates last month on deposits parked with the Bank of Japan - the first time since the policy was adopted in 2016. It was an unintended consequence of a steady rise in deposits, as households and firms saved some of the payouts they received from the government to weather the pandemic's hit. The balance of deposits at major banks, including MUFG, hit 446 trillion yen ($3.87 trillion) as of January, up 14per cent from pre-pandemic levels in early 2020. Deposits could rise further as the government plans to spend another 2 trillio...

Thiel Capital and regional aviation providers Mesa Air Group are investing in Regent, a start-up building electric seagliders that can fly low over the water at a top speed of 180 miles per hour. Rather than taking off from a runway at an airport, Regent's 12-passenger seagliders motor out of a harbor on a hydrofoil and and can take off at a low speed due to their fixed-wing design. The company wants to make trips between coastal cities fast, safe and affordable with the smallest possible environmental footprint, said CEO and co-founder Billy Thalheimer. (The start-up's name is an acronym for Regional Electric Ground Effect Naval Transport.) Regent's seagliders should also be able to fly to islands and coastal hubs where airports are inadequate or nonexistent or when infrastructure has t...