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Bloomberg Japan and China are racing to build a new type of ultra-fast, levitating train, seeking to demonstrate their mastery over a technology with big export potential. Magnetic levitation, or maglev, trains use powerful magnets to glide along charged tracks at super-fast speeds made possible by the lack of friction. A handful of short distance and experimental maglev trains are ...

DUBAI / WAM India’s farm sector growth will likely be the highest in three years as better-than-normal rain helped farmers to boost output of crops, including rice, sugar cane and soybeans. Agriculture growth in the year that began in April will surpass the 4% level achieved in 2019-20, said Atul Chaturvedi, president of the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India. That ...

Bloomberg Storm Nivar over the Bay of Bengal was expected to turn into a “very severe cyclone” by Wednesday night and may cause widespread damage to crops, mud houses and electricity poles in some southern Indian states. The storm, which is likely to have a sustained wind speed of 120 to 130 kilometres (75-81 miles) per hour, will cross Tamil ...

Bloomberg JD Health International Inc is looking to raise as much as $3.5 billion in its Hong Kong initial public offering in what would be Asia’s biggest health-care listing on record. The healthcare unit of China’s No. 2 e-commerce giant JD.com Inc is selling 381.9 million shares at HK$62.8 to HK$70.58 each, according to terms of the deal obtained by ...

Bloomberg Indian Hotels Co, the luxury hotel chain run by the Tata Group, used the coronavirus-imposed lockdown to see where it could save costs. “This was the historic opportunity to review our fixed and variable costs,” CEO Puneet Chhatwal said. “The industry never experienced such a revenue decline in last 100 years.” The firm, which owns the iconic Taj brand ...

Bloomberg The Hong Kong government is scrapping an extra stamp duty levied on commercial property purchases in an effort to bring the lackluster market back to life. The government will abolish the additional duty for non-residential properties effective from Thursday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said during a speech. The levy of as much as 8.5% of a property’s value was ...

Bloomberg The Philippines has set a price cap for Covid-19 swab tests amid complaints of exorbitant and wide price disparity, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said. The price for real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction or RT-PCR test is capped at 5,000 pesos ($104) in private hospitals and 3,800 pesos in government laboratories, Duque said in a briefing. Some testing centres ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc is doling out hiring bonuses as high as $3,000 to make sure it has enough people to squeak through the busy holiday shopping season. That’s stoking resentment among existing workers who recently got coupons for Thanksgiving turkeys as a thank you for their hard work. Social-media chatrooms where Amazon workers congregate have lit up. One worker shared ...

Bloomberg The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) affirmed its decision to designate ZTE Corp as a national security threat over concerns telecommunications gear made by the Chinese company could be used for spying. The action shows that the FCC remains determined to drive ZTE and fellow Shenzhen-based manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co from the US market, where small rural carriers rely ...

Bloomberg The UK lost a “crucial month” in its fight against coronavirus because it was too slow to respond to a shortage of ventilators, while the delay in sourcing protective equipment came at a cost of 10 billion pounds ($13.3 billion) to the taxpayer, according to two spending reports. Ministers only started efforts to buy more ventilators on March 3, ...