World

NEW DELHI :India's antitrust watchdog on Friday imposed a penalty of US$102 million on Heineken-controlled beer giant United Breweries and US$16 million on the local unit of Denmark's Carlsberg in a case related to cartelisation of beer prices in the country. The order comes after a long-drawn investigation that in 2018 saw Competition Commission of India (CCI) raiding the offices of the brewers. The raids happened after rival Anheuser Busch InBev told the watchdog it had detected an industry cartel in India after it acquired operations of SABMiller Plc. A detailed CCI investigation, reported by Reuters last year, found that the companies collectively strategised in seeking price increases in several states, forging a cartel. In a final order published Friday, the CCI announced penaltie...

The islands of Southeast Asia are reopening to visitors — one small step at a time. The region is home to countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, that kept Covid rates low throughout 2020. That changed with the arrival of the delta variant, which forced many Southeast Asian nations to contend with big outbreaks for the first time. Plans to reopen popular hotspots such as Phuket and Bali were put on hold. Singapore, too, recorded a spike in cases and kept its borders largely sealed to tourists. Until now. Thailand Many Southeast nations are cautiously opening to travelers. One appears to be throwing its doors wide open. Thailand pioneered Southeast Asia's tourism reopening on July 1 with its first-of-a-kind "sandbox" scheme. Thailand announced this week plans to reopen its pop...

LONDON : Royal Dutch Shell plans to start producing low-carbon jet fuel at scale by 2025, in an attempt to encourage the world's airlines to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Aviation, accounting for 3per cent of the world's carbon emissions, is considered one of the toughest sectors to tackle due to a lack of alternative technologies to jet fueled-engines. Shell, one of the world's largest oil traders, said it aims to produce 2 million tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2025, a ten-fold increase from today's total global output. Produced from waste cooking oil, plants and animal fats, SAF could cut up to 80per cent of aviation emissions, Shell said. Shell, which at present only supplies SAF produced by others, including Finnish refiner Neste, said on Monday it wants green jet...

The Fed got a read on the real estate market as monetary policymakers are beginning their two-day September meeting Tuesday morning. August housing starts increased a better-than-expected 3.9% to an annual rate of nearly 1.62 million units compared to a revised 6.2% decline in July. Building permits in August rose 6% to nearly 1.73 million. Economists had seen a 2.1% drop. The July increase was revised slightly lower to 2.2%. Central bankers will put that data into the mix as they consider when to start tapering their massive Covid-era bond purchases. Hotter inflation , which Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sees as temporary, will be weighed against a recovering economy. However, a big disappointment in August job growth could keep the Fed at bay a little longer. Central bankers release their p...

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards About $90.1 million has mistakenly gone out to users of popular decentralized finance, or DeFi, staking protocol Compound, after an upgrade gone epically wrong. Now, the founder is making a plea — and issuing a few threats — to incentivize the voluntary return of the platform's crypto tokens. "If you received a large, incorrect amount of COMP from the Compound protocol error: Please return it," Robert Leshner, founder of Compound Labs, tweeted late Thursday. "Keep 10% as a white-hat. Otherwise, it's being reported as income to the IRS, and most of you are doxxed," continued the tweet. The price of Compound's native token, comp, initially plunged nearly 13% in a day on news of the bug, but it's since gained back ground. Whether reward recipients choose...

NEW DELHI: Rich nations need to commit much more than US$100 billion to help poor countries fight climate change due to their high historical share of emissions, India's chief economic adviser said on Thursday (Sep 30), ahead of a UN Climate Change Conference (COP26). Wealthy nations are under ever-greater pressure to deliver on an unmet pledge, made in 2009, to send US$100 billion a year to help finance an adequate response by developing countries to rising global temperatures as the world prepares for COP26. "This US$100 billion that the advanced economies are talking about actually for innovation in climate finance, you know, it's a drop in the ocean," KV Subramanian told Reuters. "I think their commitment needs to be much greater." Even though India has not yet committed to a net-z...

ST. LOUIS : When night fell, a clerk at a bustling 24-hour MotoMart flipped a switch from behind the counter. Electromagnetic locks sealed the doorway. A window sign, now illuminated in red, warned “facial recognition technology in use” and directed customers to “look up at the camera.” On this recent weeknight, a woman who wanted cigarettes was locked out. Confused at first, she quickly realized that she needed to remove her medical mask. After her unobstructed facial image was scanned into a store computer, then screened against the company’s photo archives of previous customers convicted of store-related crimes, the doors clicked open. Just a few miles away, across the Missouri state line in Illinois, such screening is against the law under the toughest privacy laws in the country. P...

WASHINGTON: Spending less on food. Drawing down on retirement savings. Dropping out of the workforce altogether. Last year, the United States massively expanded unemployment aid as COVID-19 broke out. But in the coming days those benefits will end, forcing millions of jobless Americans - some of whom haven't worked for the entire pandemic - to make hard choices about how they will get by in an economy newly menaced by the Delta variant. "I have no idea how we would survive, just on my daughter's income," said Deborah Lee, an unemployed phlebotomist in Arizona who is recovering from a COVID-19 outbreak that affected her daughter and two of her three granddaughters. The government-funded programmes that increased weekly payments and gave aid to the long-term unemployed and freelancers wer...

Prices for an array of consumer goods rose less than expected in August in a sign that inflation may be starting to cool, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The consumer price index, which measures a basket of common products as well as various energy goods, increased 5.3% from a year earlier and 0.3% from July. A month ago, prices rose 0.5% from June. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting a 5.4% annual rise and 0.4% on the month. Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the CPI rose just 0.1% for the month vs. the 0.3% estimate, and 4% on the year against the expectation of 4.2%. The 5.3% annual increase still keeps inflation at its hottest level in about 13 years, though the August numbers indicate the pace may be abating. Markets initially rallied following ...

Reduced agricultural production, water scarcity, rising sea levels and other adverse effects of climate change could cause up to 216 million people to leave their homes and migrate within their own countries by 2050, the World Bank has warned. The estimate from the Washington-based development lender released Monday updates a 2018 report with new figures from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, North Africa and East Asia and the Pacific to provide a more complete overview of the potential toll from rising global temperatures. “Climate change is an increasingly potent driver of migration,” the report said. Shortages of food and water along with rising seas highlight “the urgency for action as livelihoods and human well-being are placed under increasing strain.” Juergen Voegele, the World Ba...