Hong Kong appears to have accepted defeat. Chief Executive Carrie Lam set out a blueprint for undoing the stringent social distancing measures and border curbs that severely curtailed residents’ daily lives for the past two years. Despite the government’s Covid-zero measures, 3.6 million of the city’s 7.3 million residents may have been infected. The statistic reflects badly on Hong Kong. ...

  Covid cases are on the rise in several European countries. Upticks are visible again in France, Italy and the UK. Infection rates in both Austria and Germany eclipse previous waves of the virus (based on cases per million). China is grappling with new highs in terms of case counts. The US may soon follow. This fifth wave of the ...

  Jerome Powell seemed to get the message across this time. After the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting, bond yields fell as he laid out an extremely hawkish agenda in his press conference. The conventional wisdom is that traders took Powell’s repeated insistence that the economy was strong enough to withstand repeated hikes as reason to be optimistic ...

  Bloomberg Boeing Co faces a new crisis after a 737 jet fell out of the sky in China, renewing concerns about its best-selling family of planes and extending one of the most turbulent periods in the aviation titan’s century-long history. The 737-800 aircraft operated by China Eastern Airlines Corp nose-dived into mountainous terrain with 132 people on board, prompting ...

Bloomberg Traveling to Hong Kong isn’t set to get much easier once a ban on flights from nine countries including the US and the UK is lifted, with Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd planning just one inbound flight every two weeks. The airline said it isn’t able to expand its schedule any more than what it was planning due to “the ...

  Bloomberg Nike Inc shares jumped in late trading after quarterly results beat analysts’ expectations, showing the world’s largest athletic-wear retailer is overcoming struggles with its supply chain and weakness in China. Global sales rose 5% to $10.9 billion for the third quarter, beating Wall Street’s estimates. Revenue outpaced expectations in all regions, including Greater China, where sales fell less ...

Bloomberg Carrefour SA is in advanced talks to sell a controlling stake in its Taiwanese operations to its local minority partner Uni-President Enterprises Corp, according to people familiar with the matter. Uni-President has emerged as the likeliest buyer for the French grocer’s 60% of the business, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. The ...

  Bloomberg Kohl’s Corp said it has authorised Goldman Sachs Group Inc to coordinate with select bidders for the retailer so they can “refine and improve” their offers with proof of financing and binding documentation. Kohl’s said in a statement that it has received multiple preliminary indications of interest that are nonbinding and don’t have committed financing. Separately, the company ...

  Bloomberg Alibaba Group soared 11% after ramping up its share buyback program to $25 billion, fuelling hopes that Beijing is easing off an internet crackdown that wiped out $470 billion of the e-commerce giant’s value. The board approved the program, which will run for two years through to March 2024, the company said. It also appointed a new independent ...

  Bloomberg A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny to nine years in a high-security prison in a ruling that will keep President Vladimir Putin’s top critic sidelined amid a harsh crackdown on the opposition. Navalny, who is currently serving a two-and-a-half year sentence that the European Court of Human Rights called politically motivated, in a ...