By Takaya Yamaguchi TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration will pledge to boost childcare spending and focus on sustaining wage hikes in its mid-year economic policy roadmap, a final draft seen by Reuters showed on Thursday. The blueprint, expected to be approved by cabinet on Friday, comes amid speculation Kishida could dissolve parliament…
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – New home sales in Singapore jumped to the highest in a year, official data showed on Thursday, despite a hike in taxes a month earlier to try to cool the market and discourage foreign buying. There were 1,038 new homes sold in May, up 17% from April, according to data from the…
By Ellen Zhang and Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s economy stumbled in May with industrial output and retail sales growth missing forecasts, adding to expectations that Beijing will need to do more to shore up a shaky post-pandemic recovery. The economic rebound seen earlier this year has lost momentum in the second quarter, prompting…
By Sakura Murakami and John Geddie TOKYO (Reuters) -The Pacific island nation of Palau has asked the United States to step up patrols of its waters after several incursions by Chinese vessels into its exclusive economic zone, President Surangel Whipps Jr. told Reuters in an interview. Whipps Jr. said he would also welcome a bigger…
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Thursday will call for continued work to redesign global supply chains to emphasize resilience and a more diverse set of economies producing steel, aluminum and other goods. In a speech at the National Press Club, Tai will explain how decades of trade policies…
(Reuters) – J.P.Morgan trimmed China’s economic growth forecast for 2023 after the country’s May industrial output and retail sales growth missed forecasts. Economists led by Haibin Zhu said on Thursday they now expect China’s economy to grow 5.5% this year against an earlier estimate of 5.9% growth. (Reporting by Aniruddha Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by…
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Kremlin aide urged the Russian government on Thursday to adopt legislation allowing foreign flagged vessels to use the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which Moscow wants to turn into a new Suez Canal. The NSR runs from Murmansk near Russia’s border with Norway eastwards to the Bering Strait near Alaska. Although the…
By Rupam Jain NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Indian police filed charges of sexual harassment and criminal intimidation on Thursday against the chief of the country’s wrestling federation, a powerful member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), following complaints by female wrestlers. Public Prosecutor Atul Srivastav read out the charges against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a…
By Humeyra Pamuk, David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Wednesday played down expectations of any breakthrough from the first trip by a U.S. Secretary of State to China in five years, after a tense call with China’s foreign minister ahead Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing next week. Chinese foreign minister…
By Chayut Setboonsarng BANGKOK (Reuters) – Overseas travel bookings from mainland China are currently at just over half of pre-pandemic levels but are on course to return to the 2019 numbers by the end of this year or early 2024, the head of online travel agency Agoda said on Thursday. China was the world’s largest…
