Bloomberg Hong Kong’s retail sales rose more than expected in July, reversing two months of declines as the city attempts to mount a recovery from Covid-19 curbs and other headwinds. Retail sales value rose 4.1% in July from a year ago, the Census and Statistics Department said on Wednesday. That compared to a median estimate of a 1.4% rise ...

Bloomberg Taiwan warned it faces “severe military challenges” from surging Chinese military activity edging closer to the island, as Beijing tries to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Taipei expects the People’s Liberation Army to continue sending warships and jets across the median line that divides the waterway, the island’s Ministry of National Defense said in an annual ...

  Bloomberg A court in Pakistan told former Prime Minister Imran Khan to explain in writing his angry comments against a female judge who had denied bail to Khan’s close aid, as it continues to mull initiating contempt proceedings against him. A five-judge panel headed by Chief Justice Athar Minallah directed the former leader to submit a response within a ...

Bloomberg German inflation accelerated to the most since the euro was introduced on soaring energy prices, bolstering calls for a jumbo interest-rate increase when the European Central Bank meets next week. Consumer prices in Europe’s biggest economy, calculated under European Union harmonised standards, jumped 8.8% from a year ago in August, matching the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of ...

  Bloomberg US job openings rise unexpectedly in July after a sizable upward revision to the previous month, underscoring persistent tightness in the labour market as employers compete for a limited supply of workers. The number of available positions edged up to 11.2 million in the month — topping all estimates — from a revised 11 million in June, the ...

  Bloomberg Swedish housing prices will continue falling until the middle of next year as the share of household income that goes towards mortgage interest payments is set to double, economists at the Nordic region’s largest bank said in a new forecast. Nordea Bank Abp now expects prices to drop 15% from a peak earlier this year, which is larger ...

  Bloomberg Canada’s current account surplus came in much less than expected, as rising oil profits to foreign investors offset a surge in energy revenue. The country ran a current account surplus of C$2.7 billion ($2.1 billion) in the second quarter, Statistics Canada reported, well short of the C$6.8 billion projected by economists. The agency also cut its estimate for ...

  Bloomberg In a year where initial public offerings (IPOs) globally have slumped by more than two-thirds, one would expect the summer break to be especially quiet. Not so in Asia, where stock listings have notched their second-highest August haul on record. First-time share sales in the Asia Pacific region totaled $14.9 billion this month, data compiled by Bloomberg show. ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s financial regulator proposed easing corporate tax rules for crypto assets as well as lighter levies for individual stock investors in support of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s efforts to reinvigorate the economy. Companies should be exempted from paying taxes for paper gains on crypto coins that they hold after issuing them, the regulator proposed in its annual tax-code ...

  Abu Dhabi / WAM Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, on Tuesday announced the launch of its second Region in the Middle East, the AWS Middle East (UAE) region. AWS estimates that its projected spending on the construction and operation of the new Region will support an average of nearly 6,000 full-time jobs annually at external vendors, with ...