World

BANGKOK: Thailand's exports have been a rare bright spot in the struggling economy, but migrant worker shortages are threatening labour-intensive sectors, undermining a fragile recovery as the country struggles with its worst COVID-19 outbreak yet. Even as global demand rebounds and this year's 9 per cent drop in the baht makes Thai goods more attractive, a lack of migrant workers is threatening exports as the economy already faces a tourism slump and sluggish domestic consumption due to virus containment measures. Key exporting industries such as food and rubber production can rely on migrant workers for as much as half of their workforce, according to company and industry officials. Exports accounted for 45 per cent of Thailand's gross domestic product in 2020. Thailand has about 3 mi...

BENGALURU: Global economic growth prospects are holding strong for this year and next, despite a significant majority of economists in Reuters polls warning new variants of the coronavirus pose the biggest risk to that outlook. A global survey of nearly 500 economists taken this month also concluded recent rising inflation in key economies around the world would be transitory. The global economy was now forecast to expand a sizzling 6.0per cent this year, which would be its fastest in nearly half a century, followed by a still-robust 4.5per cent in 2022. Both were marginal increases from the April poll. Slightly more than half the 48 economies polled on each quarter were upgraded for both years. But a surge in the latest variant of the virus, which has kept the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olymp...

ROME: Large cruise ships will be banned from sailing into the centre of Venice from Aug 1, Italy announced on Tuesday (Jul 13) after years of warnings they risk causing irreparable damage to the lagoon city. The decision, confirmed at a meeting of Prime Minister Mario Draghi's cabinet, comes just days before a meeting of the UN's cultural organisation UNESCO, which had proposed to add Venice to its list of endangered heritage sites. "The decree adopted today represents an important step for the protection of the Venetian lagoon system," Draghi said in a statement. He added that there would be money to mitigate the impact on employment. The move will see the biggest ships diverted to the city's industrial port of Marghera. However, this is viewed as only a temporary solution, with mini...

SINGAPORE: The first listing of a multibillion-dollar Southeast Asian tech company in Indonesia on Friday (Aug 6) will set the benchmark for IPO hopefuls in a region where global investors are chasing fast growing e-commerce markets. Bukalapak.com, a 11-year-old e-commerce company backed by Ant Group, Singapore sovereign fund GIC and local media and tech conglomerate Emtek, makes its market debut after raising US$1.5 billion in Indonesia's biggest ever initial public offering (IPO). The first listing of a venture-backed company in a country crowded with founder-led startups, has fuelled a frenzy among institutional and retail investors scrambling to get a piece of the IPO in a market that has seen few large flotations. "I'm expecting to get some capital gain for the listing since it wil...

KUALA LUMPUR: Most Malaysian states are likely to move into phase four or the final phase of the country’s COVID-19 exit strategy by October at the earliest, said Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Monday (Jul 26). He was speaking at the special sitting of the House of Representatives or Dewan Rakyat to brief the Members of Parliament on the government’s National Recovery Plan (NRP) to get the country out of the COVID-19 crisis. “With the continuous efforts to implement the recovery process and immunisation programme, which is currently running smoothly, we expect that most states to transition to phase four of the National Recovery Plan as early as October,” he said. First announced by Mr Muhyiddin on Jun 15, the national recovery plan outlined three key indicators on how the cou...

LONDON: Global shares rode earnings to a record high on Wednesday, while the dollar and Treasury yields languished in the wait for U.S. employment data to provide clues to the pace of monetary tightening in the world's biggest economy. Strong corporate profits have eased concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, as vaccine roll-outs continue apace in developed markets, despite a resurgence of cases in Asian countries including China. While that has helped buoy equities, inflationary pressures and a growing belief the U.S. Federal Reserve may soon signal its intention to trim support to the economy continue to cause a tussle with the bond market over mid-term direction. "Macro data is coming at high expansionary levels but currently all the market is seeing is peak data. It wants to know what...

SINGAPORE: A 39-year-old woman who allegedly left the hotel room she was serving stay-home notice at in Sentosa and climbed up to the balcony of another room was on Friday (Jul 30) charged in court for breaching COVID-19 measures. Jin Chensu arrived in Singapore from Cambodia on Oct 4 last year and was served a stay-home notice until Oct 18, 2020, said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) in a news release. "(Jin) was briefed by an ICA officer that she was required to serve her stay-home notice at a dedicated facility and was not allowed to leave her room for the duration of her stay-home notice," said ICA. She was later taken to Shangri-la Rasa Sentosa Resort, according to court documents. Jin allegedly left her room on Oct 6, 2020 without wearing a mask, said ICA in the re...

In this article DOW 1. Stocks to open lower, but July still tracking for gains Traders at the New York Stock Exchange, July 20, 2021. Source: NYSE Wall Street is set to open lower on the final trading day of July as investors got three Dow stock earnings reports and another reading on inflation to digest. Nasdaq futures were leading the way down Friday, with a decline of more than 1% as Amazon shares fell nearly 7% in the premarket after its first revenue miss in three years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 hit all-time highs during Thursday's trading and broke two-day losing streaks. But they failed to top Monday's record closes. The Nasdaq advanced modestly, but still finished about 0.4% away from its latest record close on Monday. All three stock benchmarks were tracking...

WASHINGTON: Former US vice president Mike Pence warned on Wednesday (Jul 14) that China was on its way to becoming an "evil empire" and posing a greater threat to America than the Cold War-era Soviet Union. Former president Donald Trump's deputy, believed to be mulling his own 2024 White House bid, also urged current occupant Joe Biden to confront China more forcefully on multiple fronts including the origin of the coronavirus and the Asian giant's "neocolonialism". "The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat to our prosperity, security and values on the face of the Earth," Pence said during a speech at the Heritage Foundation think tank. "China may not yet be an evil empire, but it's working hard every day to become one," he added. "In many respects, communist China poses a gr...

Since the beginning of the year, the Federal Aviation Administration has reported a sharp uptick in the number of passengers behaving badly. In a typical year, the Federal Aviation Administration logs between 100 and 200 incidents. In the first three months of 2021, it reported a whopping 1300, despite the fact that the number of passengers was still well below normal levels. It’s difficult to account for this recent uptick, but it’s hard to dispute that air rage has become a growing problem over the past few decades. The usual explanations — shrinking legroom, alcohol and flight delays — have merit. But these are arguably overshadowed by a decades-long trend: the transformation of air travel from an elite prerogative to a service that divides passengers into haves and have nots. This w...