WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Six Pacific countries are at a high risk of debt distress in part due to government spending to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, the World Bank said in a report on Thursday. The report, titled Raising Pasifika, said fiscal consolidation was needed in Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of…
BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing’s special envoy noted there was no panacea to the war in Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv earlier this week, but urged all parties to create conditions for peace talks, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday. Special envoy for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui visited Kyiv on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he…
By Lucy Craymer WELLINGTON (Reuters) -New Zealand on Thursday announced a worse-than-forecast budget deficit as a slowing economy and a lower tax take hit its coffers, leaving the Labour government walking a tight rope as its spending plan is expected to fan inflationary pressures. In his last budget ahead of what is set to be…
By Praveen Menon SYDNEY (Reuters) – Two of Australia’s top football codes on Thursday backed a proposal to constitutionally recognise the country’s Indigenous population in a referendum, as latest opinion polls show public support for the government-backed plan dipping. In a full page statement published in The Sydney Morning Herald, Rugby Australia (RA) said the…
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s fiscal revenue rose 11.9% in the first four months of 2023 from the same period a year earlier, accelerating sharply from a 0.5% rise in January-March, official data showed, as the economy stages a gradual but uneven post-COVID recovery. Fiscal revenue totalled 8.32 trillion yuan ($1.20 trillion)in the first four months…
By Stella Qiu SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia employment unexpectedly dipped in April after two months of outsized gains, and the jobless rate also ticked up in a sign the red-hot labour market might be cooling, bolstering the case for a pause in interest rate hikes next month. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on…
(Reuters) -Micron Technology Inc said on Wednesday it plans to invest up to 500 billion yen ($3.70 billion) in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology over the next few years with support from the Japanese government. The latest extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chipmaking machines will be used to make 1-gamma chips, which can be used for mass…
By Tetsushi Kajimoto TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s export growth hit its weakest pace in more than two years in April as China-bound shipments slumped amid lingering worries about faltering global economic demand. Exports rose 2.6% in April from a year earlier, Ministry of Finance data showed on Thursday, slower than a 3.0% increase expected by economists…
By Luc Cohen and Brendan O’Brien NEW YORK (Reuters) -The mother of a New Yorker killed in 2017 when a man driving a truck mowed down cyclists and pedestrians on a crowded Manhattan bike path told a hushed courtroom on Wednesday that no punishment meted out to the attacker could compare to her pain. “This…
By Casey Hall SHANGHAI (Reuters) – When graduate student Cai Zhishan decided to spend her Labour Day holidays in northern China, she wished she had enough money to hire a car for the more-than 4,000km (2,500 mile) round trip – the equivalent of driving from New York to Los Angeles. Instead, she chose “travelling like…
