World

HONG KONG: Hong Kong will shorten the COVID-19 hotel quarantine period for all arrivals to three days from seven, taking another step to gradually unwind stringent pandemic rules that have isolated the Asian financial hub. The measures will be effective from Friday, the city's leader, John Lee, told a news conference on Monday (Aug 8). Arrivals will need to self-monitor for a further four days, during which they will be forbidden to enter premises such as restaurants and bars. "We need to balance between people's livelihood and the competitiveness of Hong Kong to give the community maximum momentum and economic vitality," Lee said. People in quarantine will be issued a red code on a government-mandated app. This will change to a yellow code once they leave quarantine, signifying they m...

HONG KONG: The dollar held onto recent gains against the euro and sterling on Friday (Aug 26) ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's widely-anticipated speech, which traders hope will offer clues on the US central bank's tightening plans. The euro was at US$0.9966 in early Asian trade, having failed in several attempts this week to break back above parity against the dollar. It fell below that psychologically important level on Monday. Sterling was down 0.17 per cent at US$1.182. Britain's energy regulator later in the day will announce an eye-watering jump in a cap on energy prices, further boosting inflation in an already struggling British economy. Fuel price increases are passed on to British consumers through a price cap, calculated every three months. This left the dollar ...

The United States beefed up its effort to cut off the flow of advanced technology to China by instructing Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices to stop sending their flagship artificial intelligence chips there. While the news shocked the chip sector by the time markets closed on Thursday (Sep 1), sending the Philadelphia semiconductor index down 1.9 per cent and Nvidia and AMD down 7.6 per cent and 3 per cent respectively, the letters from the US officials appeared to target a narrow but critical part of China's computing industry. The regulations appear to focus on chips called GPUs with the most powerful computing capabilities, a critical but niche market with only two meaningful players, Nvidia and AMD. Their only potential rival - Intel Corp - is trying to break into the market but...

OTTAWA : Crude oil sank with Treasury yields and the dollar on Thursday as recession worries intensified following the Bank of England's warning of a drawn-out downturn and ahead of key a hotly anticipated U.S. employment report on Friday. Wall Street stocks ended mixed, with gains for high-growth stocks offset by the drag from energy shares, as a key U.S. jobs report loomed on Friday. The S&P 500 edged slightly lower to 4,151.94, retreating from a two-month closing high in the previous session. The Dow dropped 0.26 per cent to 32,726.82, from near an almost three-month high on Wednesday. The Nasdaq, though, swung to a 0.44 per cent gain to 13,311.041 from steep early losses, extending a three-month peak. The two-year Treasury yield eased 7.1 basis points to 3.0366 per cent, while the...

In a flurry of statements on Friday (August 12) against the backdrop of escalating US-China tensions, five of China’s biggest state-owned companies announced their intent to delist from the New York Stock Exchange – PetroChina Co Ltd, China Life Insurance Co, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Aluminum Corp of China and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co, which represent more than US$300 billion in market cap. As of this month, the market cap of these Chinese giants are as follows: PetroChina $132.11 billion; China Life Insurance $94.88 billion; China Petroleum & Chemical Corp $70.23 billion. Aluminum Corp of China ($10.29 billion) is also the world’s second-largest alumina producer and third-largest primary aluminum producer; and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co ($3.77 billion) is a subsid...

Like many of Wordle's thousands of players, Bill Gates is addicted to the daily online word game. In a blog post on Tuesday, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder wrote that he and a group of friends play the game — and several of its variations, like Quordle and Nerdle — daily to compare scores. The billionaire also shared his strategy for guessing the answer in four turns or less. "If you've played Wordle, you know how important it is to make your first guess strategically," Gates wrote. "I like to start with a word that contains lots of vowels, like AUDIO or OUNCE." The New York Times, which bought Wordle in January in a seven-figure deal, recommended a similar game plan in February: Three of the five letters in your starting word should be vowels, regardless of whether or not you use...

KUALA LUMPUR :Oil prices rose on Wednesday (Aug 17), recovering from six-month lows hit the previous day, as a larger-than-expected drop in US oil and gasoline stocks reminded investors that demand remains firm, if overshadowed by the prospect of a global recession. Brent crude futures rose 56 cents, or 0.6 per cent, to US$92.90 a barrel by 0415 GMT (12.15pm Singapore time). West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed 62 cents, or 0.7 per cent, to US$87.15 a barrel. The contracts slumped about 3 per cent on Tuesday as weak US housing starts data spurred concerns about a potential global recession. "A drawdown of US gasoline stockpiles for a second straight week has reassured investors that demand is resilient, prompting buys," said Kazuhiko Saito, chief analyst at Fujitomi Secur...

“TikTok democratises the process of content creation as well as the reach that creators have,” said Mr Justin Keh, head of APAC operations, TikTok Creator Marketing Solutions. CREATING VALUE THROUGH TRUST, AUTHENTICITY AND PARTICIPATION The demand for creator content has resulted in an ecosystem of brands, agencies, creators and platforms coming together to create ripple effects across the growing digital economy. The global creator market was estimated to be around US$13.8 billion (S$19 billion) in 2021, according to Statista. As a platform that facilitates the creator economy, TikTok aims to open up new career paths for content creators. One of its strategies focuses on partnering businesses that build networks that can aggregate the power of content creators to help brands engage wit...

In this article A6I-FF watch now Anthony Tan, chief executive officer of Grab Holdings Inc., center right, and Tan Hooi Ling, co-founder of Grab Holdings Inc., celebrate on stage during a bell-ringing ceremony as Grab begins trading on the Nasdaq, in Singapore, on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images "You have to look at what Khazanah is and what its DNA is," Zahruddin said in an exclusive interview with "CNBC Squawk Box Asia" on Thursday. "Our DNA is that we manage large investments. [Venture capital] investing is not really what we do, and it's not really our expertise and skill set." "So what we try to do is, instead of trying to do those investments directly, we actually seed investments into VC funds who then invest into companies around the region." Zahru...

TAIPEI: Taiwanese prosecutors on Friday (Sep 2) indicted nine suspects on human trafficking charges for allegedly luring 88 people to Cambodia to toil in online scam syndicates that have become a regional scourge. Online "boiler room" rackets have long had a presence across Southeast Asia but in recent months more details have emerged of people being trafficked and forced to work. Victims have reported travelling to Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos on false promises of romance or high-paying jobs. Those indicted in Taiwan include the heads of two human smuggling rings that ran job adverts on social media with promises of "high salaries and easy loans", the Taipei district prosecutors' office said in a statement. The ads tricked jobless young people and those with financial difficul...