World

WASHINGTON: Vice President Kamala Harris will focus on defending international rules in the South China Sea, strengthening US leadership in the region and expanding cooperation on matters of security during her trip to Vietnam and Singapore, a senior White House official told Reuters. The trip will be Harris's first to the region, making her the only US vice president to visit Vietnam and is aimed at rallying international support to counter China's growing global influence. The countries are critical partners for the United States because of their location, size of their economies, their trade relationship with the United States and security partnership on issues such as the South China Sea, the official said. Former US foe Vietnam has emerged as a key partner of the United States and ...

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Thursday (Aug 5) offered temporary "safe haven" to Hong Kong residents in the United States, allowing what could be thousands of people to extend their stay in the country in response to Beijing's crackdown on democracy in the Chinese territory. Biden directed the Department of Homeland Security to implement a "deferral of removal" for up to 18 months for Hong Kong residents currently in the United States, citing "compelling foreign policy reasons". "Over the last year, the PRC has continued its assault on Hong Kong's autonomy, undermining its remaining democratic processes and institutions, imposing limits on academic freedom, and cracking down on freedom of the press," Biden said in the memo, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China. He s...

LIVERMORE, California: Silicon Valley has a new pitch to persuade small companies to automate: rent-a-robot. Better technology and the need to pay higher wages to humans have produced a surge in sales of robots to big companies all across America. But few of these automatons are making it into smaller factories, which are wary of big upfront costs and lacking robot engineering talent. So venture capitalists are backing a new financial model: Lease robots, install and maintain them, charge factories by the hour or month, cut the risk and initial costs. Saman Farid, a former venture capitalist who invested in robots for over a decade and saw the challenges of getting robots into factories, set up rent-a-robot Formic Technologies with backing from Lux Capital and Initialized Capital, an ea...

China expert George Magnus disagrees with Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio on Beijing's tech crackdown. In a LinkedIn post this month, Dalio said investors were misconstruing a clampdown by China on sectors including fintech, online tutoring and food delivery as "anti-capitalist." "The trend over the last 40 years has clearly been so strongly toward developing a market economy with capital markets, with entepreneurs and capitalists becoming rich," the billionaire hedge fund manager said. "As a result, they've missed out on what's going on in China and probably will continue to miss out," Dalio added. Magnus thinks Dalio is mistaken. The economist, who is an associate at the University of Oxford's China Centre, told CNBC on Wednesday that Beijing's crackdown is all about the Communist Part...

Select’s editorial team works independently to review financial products and write articles we think our readers will find useful. We may receive a commission when you click on links for products from our affiliate partners. When we talk about personal finance, numerical guidelines traditionally tend to shape our money habits. We often hear about having three to six month's worth of living expenses in an emergency fund, or abiding by the 50/30/20 budget rule (spending 50% of our take-home pay on needs, 30% on wants and 20% on debt repayment and savings). How much cash you stow away for retirement is no different. In fact, most financial experts will suggest investing 15% of your income annually in a retirement account (including any employer contribution). With 401(k)s, or employer-sponso...

Select’s editorial team works independently to review financial products and write articles we think our readers will find useful. We may receive a commission when you click on links for products from our affiliate partners. When it comes to paying for some of life's big-ticket items — like a home renovation, a wedding or even a funeral — many people opt to use credit over cash. And credit can be especially useful when an expense sneaks up on you and you just don't have enough in your emergency fund to cover the entire cost. A personal loan and personal line of credit are both forms of credit you may consider turning to. And while they may sound like the same thing, they actually have some very important differences. Read on for Select's breakdown of what you need to know about the differ...

HONG KONG :Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt are each in talks to buy stakes of around 10per cent in Chinese miner Jinchuan Group International Resources Co worth HKUS$2 billion (US$257 million), sources told Reuters on Thursday. Top Chinese battery maker CATL is looking to shore up supply of raw materials such as cobalt, prices for which have risen sharply this year. It has submitted an offer to buy 9.9per cent of Jinchuan International which would value the stake at about HKUS$2 billion, and would secure at least 3,000 tonnes of cobalt per year through the deal, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. CATL denied it would buy such a stake. Jinchuan International said in a filing it had been in "preliminary discussions with independ...

OTTAWA: Telesat took a major step toward financing its low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation that aims to provide high-speed broadband after Canada on Thursday (Aug 12) said it would invest C$1.44 billion (US$1.2 billion) in the project. Canada said it will loan Telesat, an Ottawa-based satellite communications firm, C$790 million, while purchasing C$650 million in preferred stock in the LEO unit, called Telesat Lightspeed. Canada will also receive warrants that can be exchanged for common shares in Telesat. "We have dramatically moved the ball forward with this and expect to be fully financed in the near term," Telesat Chief Executive Officer Dan Goldberg said in a telephone interview. "We are nearly there." Telesat has said it needs US$5 billion (C$6.3 billion) to launch its s...

A general view of Food Bank for New York City volunteer distributing food at Deliverance Baptist Church on June 19, 2021 in Cambria Heights, New York. Lawmakers, economists and advocates are working to extend a handful of key federal aid programs established at the beginning of the pandemic, many of which are scheduled to end just as the delta variant has caused Covid caseloads to rise across the U.S. yet again. Already this week, following pressure from House Democrats, the CDC extended the federal eviction moratorium through October 3 after it lapsed over the weekend. Now, other Congressional Democrats are calling on the White House to extend the pause on federal student loan payments scheduled to expire at the end of September, the Washington Post reports. Meanwhile, advocacy groups ar...

WASHINGTON: Investors generally shied away from risk Monday, as turmoil in Afghanistan, fresh concerns about an economic slowdown in China and the spreading coronavirus Delta variant put the brakes on last week's equities surge. Wall Street's major indices were all down around midday Monday after notching fresh record gains last week, with the tech sector taking the brunt of the losses. At the same time, safe-haven investments such as gold, the dollar and US Treasuries saw increased investor demand. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.04 per cent, the S&P 500 lost 0.21 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.73 per cent. The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 45 nations, fell 0.46 per cent. "It's undeniable that there are concerns looming that could spook some inve...