World

Investors raised short bets on most Asian emerging currencies, a fortnightly Reuters poll found, as a slew of factors including U.S. rate-hike expectations, rising inflation and signs of slowing global economic growth boosted the dollar. Long positions on the Singapore dollar, Taiwan's dollar and the Indian rupee were reversed, while bearish views on the South Korean won hit a two-year peak, the poll of 12 respondents showed. The Indonesian rupiah was the only currency with a bullish trend, although long bets were almost halved. The safe-haven greenback has risen to a one-year high since the Federal Reserve's hawkish tilt two weeks ago led markets to price in a rate hike sometime in 2022, with sharp gains in benchmark Treasury yields adding to its appeal. The dollar is expected to domi...

LONDON :For the Toon Army, the nickname of Newcastle United's success-starved followers, news that the club's sale to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund appeared to be on the brink of completion on Thursday, will feel like an early Christmas present. To be more precise it will feel like all their Christmases have come at once. With the clock ticking down on the deal, Newcastle fans began gathering at the club's St James' Park stadium amid an atmosphere of mounting excitement. While rival fans smirk at what they regard as delusions of grandeur at the north east club who have not been English champions since 1927 and have not won any domestic silverware since 1955, those who flock more in hope than expectation to St James' Park truly believe the club is a slumbering giant. Even the ho...

U.S. lawmakers pounded Facebook on Tuesday, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety, and they demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media company harms children’s mental health and stokes divisions. Zuckerberg, hours later in a public Facebook post, defended the company, saying the accusations were at odds with Facebook’s goals. “The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical,” he wrote. “We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don’t want their ads next to harmful or angry content. And I don’t know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed.” During a Senate Commerce subcom...

GREATER DANGERS TO MUTUAL TRUST AND SOCIAL COHESION Terrorist groups in these faraway places were serious threats to Singapore. But for multi-racial and multi-religious Singapore, terrorism was not just a threat to our physical safety. The greater danger was to our mutual trust and social cohesion. In the face of jihadist terrorism, and especially after several Singaporean members of the JI were detained, non-Muslims in Singapore could easily have become fearful and suspicious of their Muslim neighbours, colleagues and friends. And Muslims in turn, feeling distrusted and threatened, could have closed in on themselves. We would have been divided by race and religion. And if an attack had actually taken place here, our society could have been torn apart. But we drew on the trust built u...

HONG KONG :The editor-in-chief of state-backed Chinese newspaper Global Times warned debt-ridden property giant Evergrande Group that it should not bet on a government bailout on the assumption that it is "too big to fail". It was the first commentary to appear in state-backed media casting doubt on a government bailout for the country's No.2 property developer, whose shares fell on Friday for the fifth consecutive day amid concerns it is heading for default. Evergrande is scrambling to raise funds to pay its many lenders and suppliers and investors, with regulators warning its US$305 billion of liabilities could spark broader risks to the country's financial system if not stabilised. Global Times' editor-in-chief Hu Xijin said on his WeChat social media account on Thursday that Evergra...

NEW YORK/LONDON : World stock markets rallied on Thursday and the U.S. dollar retreated from one-month highs as worries faded about contagion from China Evergrande and as investors digested the Federal Reserve's plans for reining in U.S. stimulus. Wall Street's main indexes all ended up at least 1per cent following solid advances in European markets. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe jumped 1.01per cent, its biggest percentage rise in a month and for a third straight session of gains that brought it all the way back from Monday, when it posted its biggest percentage drop in two months after fears linked to debt-laden property group Evergrande. It was a case of “unwind of the fear from what happened in China. Markets got over-sold and pessimistic very quickly and then you have basi...

NEW YORK: UPS is girding for more supply chain problems in 2022 after this year's upheaval, but does not expect the disruption to cause huge spikes in transport costs, the shipping giant's international president Scott Price told AFP. Price said low vaccination rates in key developing countries will likely lead to additional shortages of raw materials and components similar to those that have plagued industries from automakers to apparel to homebuilders. "The logistics industry does not see 2022 as having any less disruption in supply chains than in 2021," Price told AFP in an interview. "I half-jokingly tell people 'Order your Christmas presents now because otherwise on Christmas day, there may just be a picture of something that's not coming until February or March'," Price said. But...

NEW YORK :Investors sought to stanch the bleeding on Wednesday after world stock markets suffered their worst rout since January and U.S. and European borrowing costs raced to their highest in months. Stock indices in the United States and Europe staged a partial recovery after a heavy sell-off on Tuesday consigned Wall Street to its steepest drop since mid-July. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 90.93 points, or 0.27per cent, to 34,390.92, the S&P 500 gained 6.86 points, or 0.16per cent, to 4,359.49 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 34.24 points, or 0.24per cent, to 14,512.44. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.6per cent, with investors looking past a 2.2per cent fall in the previous session. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe shed 0.27per cent. Declines in tech stocks e...

Evergrande's shares tumbled another 10 per cent on Monday after Chinese regulators warned that its US$305 billion in liabilities could lead to widespread losses in China's financial system if its debts were not stabilised. "I think (Evergrande's) equity will be wiped out, the debt looks like it is in trouble and the Chinese government is going to break up this company," Andrew Left, founder of U.S-based Citron Research and one of the world’s best known short-sellers, told Reuters. "But I don't think that this is going to be the straw that breaks the global economy's back," Left said. Left in June 2012 published a report that said Evergrande was insolvent and had defrauded investors. Citi analysts in a research note dated Tuesday said regulators may "buy time to digest" Evergrande’s non...

Even 20 years later, people still ask me where I was on Sept. 11, 2001. After serving as director for Japan-U.S. security treaty affairs in Tokyo, I had been stationed at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing since October 2000 as an Arabic language officer. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in my Beijing apartment with my wife watching CNN’s live coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. I was shocked, but hardly taken by surprise. At the time, a sense of inexplicable concern was building up in the Middle East, although I could not predict what would happen next. Nearly a year before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, militants bombed the USS Cole, an American naval destroyer, in Yemen. In 1998, the United States fired cruise missiles at suspected terrorist facilities in Afghani...