World

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's meeting with Myanmar's junta chief on Friday and their joint statement issued afterward may cause friction among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states ahead of the group's first meeting of foreign ministers this year, some officials said Saturday. In a joint statement with the prime minister of Cambodia, this year's ASEAN chair, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said he had extended a ceasefire with all armed ethnic minority groups in Myanmar through the end of this year. The ceasefire was originally set to expire at the end of February. The junta chief also said that he will assure a special ASEAN envoy to Myanmar that he can meet with all parties involved in the country's political turmoil, including the armed ethnic minority groups. ...

Before Jack Ma got into trouble with Beijing for his free-wheeling ways, there was Wang Jianlin. Once China’s richest man, the founder of commercial real estate giant Dalian Wanda Group Co. was forced to unload trophy assets by the government after an acquisition spree that hit an estimated $16 billion in 2016 alone. The sales turned out to be a blessing in disguise now that China’s property market has slumped. Wanda was besieged in 2017 when Beijing cracked down on companies’ global shopping sprees, suspicious that spending overseas was a way to take money out of China. Painful as it must have been, Wang sold hotels, including luxury residential projects in London, to Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. and his tourism and theme park holdings to Sunac China Holdings, a deal that bought him $9....

BEIJING: China wants to use the Beijing Winter Olympics to showcase its green credentials but there are concerns over the environmental cost of a Games relying on artificial snow in one of the driest places in the country. It is difficult to independently verify Beijing's claims around the Games, which begin on Feb 4, and environmentalists told AFP they fear a backlash from authorities if they analyse Beijing's green targets. This is what we know: WHAT IS CHINA PROMISING? China has pledged to power the Games using only wind, hydro and solar energy - despite relying on coal to power nearly two-thirds of its economy. The city of Zhangjiakou, one of the three Olympic hubs, has installed wind farms spanning hundreds of acres that can produce 14 million kilowatts of electricity - similar t...

"The health infrastructure in Mumbai is so robust that we are prepared for the worst, but we hope for the best," Iqbal Singh Chahal, commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, told CNBC's " Street Signs Asia ." India faced a critical shortage of oxygen last year during the second Covid wave between February and May. In June, the state of Maharashtra — where Mumbai is located — directed local oxygen producers to ramp up production and storage capacities to tackle future waves of infection. India's financial hub Mumbai has a robust health-care infrastructure that can withstand a growing number of Covid cases, the city's governing civic body told CNBC on Thursday. India is preparing for a third wave of Covid infections as cases rise again. Government data showed that daily re...

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SINGAPORE: With prices rising on multiple fronts, the Government is striving to maintain wage growth and diversify food imports to lessen the impact of inflation, said Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling on Tuesday (Jan 11). She was responding to questions from Members of Parliament Ang Wei Neng (PAP-West Coast) and Jessica Tan (PAP-East Coast) about what can be done to manage the impact on consumers. Singapore’s core inflation rose to 1.6 per cent year-on-year in November, up from the 1.5 per cent recorded in October. The headline consumer price index, or overall inflation, jumped to 3.8 per cent year-on-year in November - the highest in more than eight years - compared with 3.2 per cent in the previous month. In the near term, Ms Low said Singapore is likely to cont...

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s two eldest children have been subpoenaed by New York authorities probing whether his real-estate business manipulated the value of key assets for tax and insurance purposes. Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., longtime business associates of their father, on Monday night filed a joint motion in New York state court to block the subpoenas, accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James of making an unconstitutional attempt to get testimony from the family members while they still face a separate criminal investigation. James had revealed the existence of the subpoenas in a court filing earlier on Monday, saying she anticipated a motion to block them. Donald Trump is also fighting an earlier subpoena, she said. The Trump Organization has balked at com...

SINGAPORE: A workgroup has been formed to review the Maintenance of Parents Act to better meet the needs of the elderly, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) announced on Friday (Jan 7). Comprising nine Members of Parliament (MPs), the workgroup - to be led by Mr Seah Kian Peng (PAP-Marine Parade) - will consult members of the public and other stakeholders with a series of focus group discussions and an online survey this month. These will culminate in the tabling of a Private Member’s Bill to amend the Act, targeted for the end of this year, said MSF. The Act, which came into effect in 1995, serves to provide elderly people, who are unable to maintain themselves adequately, with a legal channel to seek maintenance from their children. It was last amended in 2010 through...

BEIJING: China topped the medals table at its 2008 Summer Olympics but expectations are much lower for next month's Beijing Games as the country attempts to build a winter sports industry nearly from scratch. China did not appear at a Winter Olympics until 1980 at Lake Placid and has hardly sparkled since, winning one gold medal - in short track speed skating - at the last Games, in South Korea's Pyeongchang, in 2018. Cold weather sports have not historically been popular in the country, where the prohibitive cost and relative lack of infrastructure had kept the pool of athletes small. But a huge government-led push to promote snow and ice activities and a soaring middle class looks set to yield some results when the Games begin on Feb 4 and home athletes always tend to overperform at t...

Business sentiment rose in December among workers in Japan with jobs sensitive to economic trends, reaching their highest level in 16 years, as confidence among retailers grew toward the year-end holidays amid relatively subdued coronavirus case numbers, government data showed Wednesday. The diffusion index of confidence in current conditions compared with three months earlier among “economy watchers,” such as taxi drivers and restaurant staff, rose 0.1 point from November to 56.4, the highest reading since December 2005, according to the Cabinet Office. The figure, further improving from the eight-year high in November, advanced for the fourth consecutive month. It was the second-highest level since comparable data became available in January 2002. A reading above 50 indicates that mor...