Bloomberg North Korea’s ruling party started a major policy meeting to lay out priorities for the coming year and how to respond to the Biden administration’s invitation to return to nuclear disarmament talks stalled for about two years. Leader Kim Jong-un attended the opening session of a Workers’ Party Central Committee meeting, the official Korean Central News Agency said. ...

  Bloomberg The Philippines signed a deal to purchase two corvettes from Hyundai Heavy Industries Co Ltd, beefing up its defense capabilities in a region that has become more militarised due competing claims in the South China Sea. The warships, part of a 28 billion-peso ($556 million) project for the Philippine Navy, are capable of anti-ship, anti-submarine and anti-air warfare ...

  Bloomberg Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the closure of International Memorial, the country’s most prominent human rights group, escalating a sweeping crackdown that has also targeted opposition activists and independent media. The group founded by Soviet-era dissidents including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov must shut down after failing to identify itself as a “foreign agent” under Russian law, Judge ...

  Bloomberg Taiwan is bracing for more Chinese military patrols in 2022, after People’s Liberation Army (PLA) incursions more than doubled this year, fuelling concern about a clash between the region’s big powers. Chinese warplanes have made some 950 forays into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone since January, according to Bloomberg-compiled data from the Ministry of National Defense in Taipei. That ...

  Bloomberg Infection with the Omicron coronavirus variant can also strengthen immunity against the earlier Delta strain, reducing the risk of severe disease, according to a paper released by South African scientists. While omicron has been shown to be highly transmissible and can evade some antibodies, after two weeks of getting symptoms immunity to subsequent infections from the strain rose ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong added a colonial-era sedition charge to Jimmy Lai’s mounting list of prosecutions, as the government’s crackdown on dissent zeros in on the former media mogul. The jailed tycoon and six former employees of his flagship Apple Daily newspaper were charged with conspiracy to produce and distribute seditious publications under the Crimes Ordinance in West Kowloon Magistrates’ ...

  Bloomberg Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak plans to cut tens of thousands of jobs within the UK civil service over the next three years, the Financial Times (FT) reported. The Treasury is expected to set parameters for the reductions in early 2022, the newspaper reported, citing people briefed on the plans. The reductions are meant to save government ...

  Bloomberg Canada has welcomed more than 401,000 permanent residents in 2021, achieving its goal set last year, and marking the highest immigration year on record. The federal government announced the milestone, adding that the record immigration flows were attained despite the ongoing pandemic, which prompted the country to close its borders to foreigners for much of the year. Because ...

  Bloomberg France will force its citizens to work from home for most of next month to contain the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant. Workers that have the option to stay away from the office must do so a minimum of three days and if possible four days a week to help reduce social contacts, Prime Minister Jean ...

  Bloomberg For US school officials struggling with a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, winter break can’t come soon enough. There were 646 Covid-related school closings for this week, up from 356 the week before, according to Burbio, a data service that aggregates calendars nationwide. Schools in states including Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio shifted to virtual learning or closed ...