News

  TOKYO/ AP Eighty-eight places in Japan are going to be designated “animation spots” to encourage visitors to seek out the train stations, school campuses, rural shrines and other fairly everyday places where popular “manga” characters are depicted. Such landmarks number in the tens of thousands, given the popularity and volume of “manga” comics in Japan, but the project aims ...

Washington / AFP Two months ago, disagreements at the heart of the US Federal Reserve spilled out into the open, with policymakers squaring off over the near-term threat of inflation. And yet as the Federal Open Market Committee prepares to meet again next Tuesday and Wednesday to review interest rate policy, widespread expectations are that, for a sixth consecutive meeting, ...

  Bloomberg Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, facing a key referendum at home later this year, accused Germany, France and Spain of breaking European Union rules on deficit control and spending in an interview with Corriere della Sera. Nations “will have to justify themselves for failing to respect the rules,” he told the Italian newspaper. “The size of Spain’s deficit ...

  BLOOMBERG Denmark’s government is ready to tackle liquidity shortages that have hit the world’s biggest market for mortgage-backed covered bonds, as it addresses risks that both the industry and investors warn are a serious side-effect of global regulation. Business Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told Bloomberg he will back a proposal by a government-appointed panel to stop forcing mortgage lenders ...

  Bloomberg The U.K. is losing its appeal for Poles seeking work abroad. While Britain is still home to more Polish expatriates than any other European country, Germany has become more of a lure, with about 41,000 moving there in 2015. That’s the fourth consecutive year that Europe’s biggest economy has been more attractive to them than the U.K. In ...

  Montreal / AFP Donors pledged nearly $13 billion on Saturday in the fight to eradicate AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2030, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at an international conference. “It is my great honor to announce that for the fifth replenishment conference for the Global Fund to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, we have reached our goal ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday defended a new $38 billion US defence aid package against criticism Israel could have negotiated a larger sum had he not angered the White House. Speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the deal was the “largest assistance agreement that the United States has ever provided to ...

  ISTANBUL/ AP With summer drawing to a close, Turkey is counting the cost of a tough year that saw a string of terrorist bombings and the fallout from a diplomatic spat with Moscow that cut deep into the country’s crucial tourist trade. And then right bang in the middle of summer, the economic backdrop got more precarious after an ...

  Emirates Business Cairo Now! A City Incomplete captures for the first time under one roof the Egyptian capital’s current design landscape and celebrates innovation and emerging talent in the fields of product, furniture, graphic and typeface design as well as architecture. Curated by Cairo-based architect, independent researcher and writer Mohamed Elshahed, Over 65 Egyptian architects, designers, entrepreneurs and graphic ...

  DUBAI / Emirates Business The UAE government can save nearly USD 5 billion if the country undergoes full digital transformation, industry experts announced ahead of GITEX Technology Week 2016. Government digital transformation can save 1.3 percent of GDP, according to a recent report by consultants Deloitte. Extrapolating to World Bank figures that show the UAE’s GDP was USD 370 ...