Bloomberg Qantas Airways Ltd has started taking bookings for international flights from July 1 in a perhaps optimistic view that by then, vaccinations will have begun to curb the spread of the coronavirus and travel demand will pick up. Ticket sales for Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, which had been set to start in March, have been pushed back to ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc is buying 11 used Boeing 767-300 planes, the first time the online retail giant has purchased, rather than leased, aircraft for its fast-growing air cargo operation. The company said it was buying seven aircraft from Delta Air Lines Inc and four from WestJet Airlines Ltd. The WestJet aircraft are currently being converted from passenger to cargo use ...

Bloomberg Prada SpA returned to profit in the second half of 2020 amid a recovery in Asia, joining other luxury brands in bouncing back from the worst of a pandemic-induced slump. Earnings before interest and taxes will turn positive in the last six months of last year after a deficit in the first half, the Italian fashion company said. Prada ...

Bloomberg Next Plc is learning to live with lockdowns. Chief Executive Officer Simon Wolfson said the worsening pandemic and the UK’s new Covid-related restrictions won’t ruin the whole year as the clothing chain is better prepared now than during previous closures. “This is traditionally the quietest time of year, so I don’t expect the impact to be as big as ...

Bloomberg US intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said a major hack of the federal government and some corporations was likely undertaken by Russia — contradicting President Donald Trump’s efforts to suggest China might be responsible — and “will require a sustained and dedicated effort to remediate.” The FBI is still focused on identifying victims, collecting and ...

Bloomberg Julian Assange was denied bail by a UK judge on Wednesday, two days after the court blocked the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the US on mental-health grounds. The ruling means the 49-year-old will remain in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, where he’s been for nearly two years. He will be held while the US government tries to appeal the extradition ...

Bloomberg President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for US secretary of state denounced Hong Kong’s arrest of dozens of opposition figures under a controversial national security law, an unprecedented crackdown that included an American lawyer. Police said they had swept up 53 people in the operation and that around 1,000 officers had been dispatched to carry out the detentions. Those arrested included ...

Bloomberg Tensions are rising in the largest party in Malaysia’s ruling coalition over whether a general election should be held amid the nation’s worsening coronavirus epidemic. Ties between Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s Bersatu party and United Malays National Organisation, his key ally, have steadily deteriorated since UMNO threatened to pull out of the coalition in October, even though Muhyuddin survived ...

Bloomberg Europe’s latest lockdowns are presenting citizens with even more hurdles to spending money, swelling already-hefty savings that stand ready to fuel the recovery once vaccines tame the pandemic. Households in the euro zone accumulated a mountain of cash when businesses shut in the spring. Now in a lengthening second wave of closures, they are sitting on about $615 billion ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel extended Germany’s lockdown and tightened restrictions as pressure mounts on her government to contain the coronavirus spread and speed up vaccinations. With hundreds dying each day, political tensions have been high and threaten to escalate further amid a rising tide of criticism over the government’s strategy to distribute a Covid-19 shot. At an ill-tempered meeting, Merkel ...