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Dubai / WAM Dubai Municipality announced that it has begun distributing 600 residential plots in the Nad Hessa area to eligible citizens using smart technologies as part of its remote work framework and procedures. In a statement, the municipality noted that the distribution of lands reflects the keenness of the UAE leadership to provide a decent life for citizens, and ...

Dubai / WAM The Customs Development Division of Dubai Customs, which is in charge of developing innovative systems and platforms, showed that 96 percent of customs transactions were approved and endorsed automatically thanks to smart workspace system which reduced clearance time to 4 minutes only. Employees have used TEAMS Microsoft 615,000 times, completed 3.1 minutes of calling, and sent 440,000 ...

Bloomberg The coronavirus pandemic has left Malaysia’s palm oil industry without enough workers, a shortage that could cost farmers as much as 25% of their annual production — a loss worth about $2.8 billion. Malaysia’s economy relies on palm oil, its most important agricultural commodity, but palm oil needs migrant workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh and India to do jobs locals ...

Bloomberg China, the world’s largest copper consumer, imported less metal and concentrate last month as pandemic-driven lockdowns in overseas mining regions disrupted supplies. Copper concentrate imports were 1.69 million tons in May, down from 2.03 million tons in April and 1.84 million tons a year ago, according to customs data. Unwrought copper and products purchases were 436,031 tons, falling from ...

Bloomberg A group led by Silver Lake Partners agreed to invest another 45.5 billion rupees ($602 million) in Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd’s digital arm, in the latest vote of confidence in billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s online push. The US private equity firm and its co-investors will hold a 2.1% stake in Reliance’s Jio Platforms unit, according to a Mumbai exchange ...

Bloomberg China’s trade surplus surged to a record in May as exports fell less than expected, helped by an increase in medical-related sales, and imports slumped along with commodity prices. Exports decreased 3.3% in dollar terms from a year earlier, beating economists’ estimates, while imports plunged 16.7%. That resulted in a trade surplus of $62.93 billion. The record surplus comes ...

Bloomberg Soybean imports by China rose 27% in May from a year earlier, after crushers increased purchases from Brazil to take advantage of cheap supplies amid strong crush margins. The country shipped in 9.4 million tons in May, compared with 7.4 million tons in the same month last year, and 6.7 million tons in April, according to customs data. Chinese ...

Bloomberg Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd has launched clinical trials of a plant-derived drug it’s developing to treat Covid-19, joining the race to find an effective treatment for the disease that’s killed almost 400,000 people worldwide. India’s largest drugmaker will commence Phase II trials on 210 patients across 12 centers in India and the results are expected by October, according to ...

Bloomberg The world’s governments and central banks are shifting from rescue to recovery mode as the deepest slump since the Great Depression shows signs of bottoming out. After rolling out trillions of dollars worth of measures to prevent their economies and markets from collapsing, they are now doubling down with even more spending to backstop a recovery as coronavirus lockdowns ...

Bloomberg AstraZeneca Plc has approached rival drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc. about a potential merger, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be the biggest health-care deal on record. The UK-based firm contacted Gilead last month about a possible tie-up, the people said, asking not to be identified because the details are private. AstraZeneca didn’t specify terms for ...