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TOKYO: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet Japanese officials in Tokyo on Friday (Aug 5), following a visit to Taiwan that Beijing answered with unprecedented military drills and missile launches including five that landed within Japan's exclusive economic zone. Pelosi's brief trip to Taiwan, where she arrived unannounced with a congressional delegation late on Tuesday and left on Wednesday, marked the highest-level US visit to the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own, in 25 years. It also came as Tokyo, one of Washington's closest allies, has been increasingly alarmed about China's growing might in the Indo-Pacific and the possibility that Beijing could take military action against Taiwan. Pelosi lauded Taiwan's democracy and pledged American solidari...

Julie Berninger has always had a side hustle. Even as she worked in tech by day, the now Massachusetts-based 33-year-old kept a blog, was producing a podcast and started an Etsy shop where she sold printable items like bachelorette party scavenger hunts. "I always was doing a million different things and even before the side hustles I was getting my master's online while working," she says. In 2019, Berninger founded Gold City Ventures with her partner, Cody Berman, a business of online courses focused on side gigs. Their most popular is a course about starting an Etsy store for printable items like the one she herself has. In 2021, Gold City Ventures brought in $1 million in revenue. She quit her job at Amazon in July 2021 to focus full time on the business. Berninger knows part of her su...

An aerial view of Phillips 66 oil refinery is seen in Linden, New Jersey, United States. Oil prices rose in early Asian trade on Thursday, bouncing off multi-month lows in the previous session caused by data signaling weak U.S. fuel demand. Global oil prices dropped on Thursday to their lowest levels since before Russia's February invasion of Ukraine as traders fretted over the possibility of an economic recession later this year that could torpedo energy demand. Benchmark Brent crude futures ended the day 2.75% lower at $94.12 a barrel after touching a mid-session low of $93.20, the lowest since Feb. 21. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled 2.3% lower at $88.54 per barrel, after touching the lowest since Feb. 3. The fall in oil prices could come as a relief to large cons...

NEW DELHI : India will allow SpiceJet Ltd to reinstate flights in a "graded manner" once the airline shows it has sufficient engineering strength and the financial ability to stock up on spares, the country's air safety watchdog told Reuters. Last week, in an unprecedented move, India slashed SpiceJet's approved departures by 50 per cent for a period of eight weeks after an audit revealed the airline's inability to establish "a safe, efficient and reliable" service. While placing SpiceJet under "enhanced surveillance", the regulator stated in its notice there was "poor internal safety oversight" at the airline, and that financial issues at the carrier were leading to "frequent shortage of spares". The chief of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Arun Kumar, said SpiceJet w...

MELBOURNE: Oil prices fell on Monday (Jul 11) in volatile trade, reversing some gains from the previous session as markets braced for new mass COVID-19 testing in China potentially hitting demand, a worry that outweighed ongoing concerns about tight supply. Brent crude futures fell US$1.02, or 1 per cent, to US$106.00 at 0605 GMT, after climbing 2.3 per cent on Friday. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures declined by US$1.38, or 1.3 per cent, to US$103.41, paring a 2 per cent gain from Friday. Trading was thinned by a public holiday in parts of Southeast Asia, including oil trading hub Singapore. The market was rattled by news that China had discovered its first case of a highly transmissible Omicron subvariant in Shanghai and that new cases had jumped to 63 in the country's ...

ISLAMAB : Pakistan's powerful army chief appealed to Washington to use its leverage to secure the early release of International Monetary Fund money, Pakistani sources said on Friday, as the South Asian nation struggles to stave off an economic crisis. Pakistan's foreign office confirmed a phone conversation between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and General Qamar Javed Bajwa, but did not provide details. Islamabad and the IMF reached a staff-level agreement earlier this month to pave the way for the release of a tranche of $1.17 billion - but the lender is awaiting approval from its board, which is not scheduled to meet until late August. Multiple Pakistani government sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity that Bajwa asked the U.S. to help speed up the release...

TOKYO : Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co is ready to buy U.S. Treasuries at a yield of 3 per cent without currency hedging, if the dollar falls below 135 yen, a senior company official said on Wednesday. In an interview with Reuters, Yoshimasa Osaki, head of investment planning at one of Japan's Big Four private life insurers, said foreign-currency bonds with a yield of 3 per cent or more look attractive when Japanese government bond (JGB) yields are so low. "Even for U.S. Treasuries, 3 per cent is quite a fortunate yield which you don't come across very often in the long run. So if the dollar slips below 135 yen, it will be a good chance to buy without a hedge," said Osaki. Osaki said the firm thinks both Treasury yields and the dollar have already hit their peaks. The 10-year U.S. Trea...

Let's get you caught up on the day's top stories. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday (Aug 2) night as part of her ongoing Asia tour. It is the highest-profile visit by a US official to the island in 25 years. Prior to her arrival, China warned that the United States would "pay the price" if Pelosi visited Taiwan. China considers Taiwan as its territory and has vowed to one day seize the island, by force if necessary. Ahead of her expected arrival, Chinese warplanes buzzed the line dividing the Taiwan Strait, and several warships remained close to it. Taiwan's military on Tuesday said it was "determined" to defend it against increased threats by China over the potential Pelosi visit. Fong Soong Hert, 51, is suspected of murdering his wife in 2021 while they wer...

NEW DELHI: India is set to surpass China as the world's most populous country in 2023, with each counting more than 1.4 billion residents this year, a United Nations report said on Monday (Jul 11), warning that high fertility would challenge economic growth. The world's population, estimated to reach 8 billion by Nov 15 this year, could grow to 8.5 billion in 2030, and 10.4 billion in 2100, as the pace of mortality slows, said the report released on World Population Day. India's population was 1.21 billion in 2011, according to the domestic census, which is conducted once a decade. The government had deferred the 2021 census due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The world's population was growing at its slowest pace since 1950, having fallen below 1 per cent in 2020, UN estimates showed. In 20...

In this article .STOXX Some airlines and airports are struggling with the post-covid demand for travel. Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images LONDON — Delays, cancellations and strikes. It's been a messy time for many European tourist hotspots as airlines and airports struggle to cope with staffing problems and pent-up travel demand after Covid-19 lockdowns. Thousands of flights have been canceled and travelers have queued for hours at passport control and luggage collection at airports across Europe — and the issues are expected to drag on. On Monday, Scandinavian airline SAS canceled 173 flights, more than half of its schedule, as a breakdown in pay talks set off a pilot strike. It said the strike would force it to cancel half of SAS's scheduled flights and affect about 30,000...