By Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea on Thursday lowered its crisis level for COVID-19 and will from June no longer require infected people to quarantine for seven days, dropping one of the country’s few remaining pandemic-related restrictions. Health authorities will still recommend five days of self-isolation for infected people but it will not…
By Mike Blake and Ted Hesson SAN DIEGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thousands of migrants are crossing into the United States this week before a new regulation takes effect that could bar most who cross illegally from seeking asylum, while others gathered on the Mexico side amid confusion about U.S. policy. The U.S. rolled out a regulation on…
By Tim Reid (Reuters) – Republican former President Donald Trump on Wednesday played down the severity of a potential U.S. government default, saying the consequences of a failure by Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit “could be maybe nothing.” Most economists warn that a failure to raise the debt ceiling by June 1, when…
By Francesco Guarascio (Reuters) -A Chinese research vessel flanked by coast guard and nearly a dozen boats on Wednesday entered a gas block operated by Russian and Vietnamese state firms, two monitoring groups said, another potential flashpoint in the South China Sea. It follows a pattern of assertive moves of late by Beijing in its…
MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippine economy expanded 6.4% in the first quarter from a year earlier, the statistics agency said on Thursday, topping expectations. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, growth slowed to 1.1% from the earlier reported 2.4% expansion in the previous three-month period. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected first quarter gross domestic product (GDP)…
By Leika Kihara and Tetsushi Kajimoto TOKYO (Reuters) – China will be the elephant in the room at this week’s meeting of Group of Seven (G7) finance leaders, who will seek to diversify supply chains away from the country — but also try to get Beijing’s cooperation in solving global debt problems. The conflicting goals…
SHANGHAI/BERLIN (Reuters) – Automakers including Volkswagen and General Motors could have considerable unused production capacity for conventionally powered vehicles in China by 2030 if they do not speed up their transition to electric vehicles (EV), Greenpeace said on Thursday. As demand for new energy vehicles (NEV) – including fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars –…
By Leika Kihara (Reuters) -Bank of Japan policymakers debated the country’s progress towards achieving their inflation target and the pace at which they could roll back stimulus at new governor Kazuo Ueda’s debut meeting in April, a summary of opinions at the meeting showed. Some in the board also flagged the side-effects of the BOJ’s…
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel hit Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza for a second day on Wednesday and Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets across the border, setting off sirens as far away as Tel Aviv, while Egypt began efforts to mediate an end to the fighting. The second round of…
SANTIAGO (Reuters) -Chile’s senate approved on Wednesday a long-awaited new mining royalty bill, passing it back to the lower chamber for a final vote that could come as early as next week. Chile is the world’s top copper producer and the bill aims to raise taxes on large copper producers. Earlier this week, the government…
