Time to get ready for the party. You put on your Balenciaga cap, fasten your Rolex Daytona and don your Louis Vuitton cross-body bag. But this isn’t In-Real-Life bling. It’s all virtual gear, worn by your digital self, who’s about to be teleported into the metaverse. Welcome to the new world of luxury, where avatars wear Burberry “skins” and carry ...

  It has been 21 months since the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, but it has felt like eons longer. That’s in large part because we keep reliving the same story lines again and again. Business operations and air travel are getting disrupted yet again by a spike in Covid cases and the emergence of the ...

  On the campaign trail in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden posed as hawk on Russia. In response to reports (later discredited) that then-President Donald Trump had ignored intelligence suggesting Russia had paid for bounties on US forces in Afghanistan, Biden declared that Trump’s “entire presidency has been a gift to Putin.” Biden’s attitude was partly explained by his party’s obsession ...

  Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding has unveiled ambitious objectives for its Southeast Asian arm Lazada, accelerating an overseas expansion to offset Chinese economic and regulatory headwinds. The Chinese e-commerce leader is targeting a long-term goal of quintupling gross merchandise value, the sum of transactions across Lazada’s platforms, to $100 billion, Alibaba outlined in a presentation to investors. It wants Lazada ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s succession options for Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr appear less clear after WestJet Airlines Ltd poached one of the German group’s rising-star managers. Alexis von Hoensbroech quit as chief of the Austrian Airlines division to join the Canadian carrier, he said on his LinkedIn page. Lufthansa said earlier that he had chosen to depart and ...

  Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly has tested positive for Covid-19, days after a US Senate hearing with other industry executives during which he appeared to downplay the effectiveness of face masks on planes. Kelly, 66, “recently tested positive for Covid-19 after experiencing mild symptoms and taking a PCR test,” the Dallas-based airline said in a ...

Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings’s CEO  Michael O’Leary thinks only vaccinated passengers should be allowed to fly, according to the Telegraph. The newspaper said that the European airline chief pushed back against compulsory vaccine programs being rolled out in Austria and Germany. Instead, governments should “make life difficult” for people who refuse to take the vaccine without good reason. “If you’re not ...

  Bloomberg Voters in Malaysia’s biggest state are set to reject the opposition alliance in elections, increasing pressure on Anwar Ibrahim to step aside as de facto leader and forcing a rethink in strategy ahead of a national vote that may be called as soon as next year. The polls in Sarawak in Borneo island is expected to present another ...

  Bloomberg The United Nations Human Rights Office called on Vietnam to release four activists who were jailed for as much 10 years for disseminating anti-state propaganda, according a statement from UN spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani. Trinh Ba Phuong, Nguyen Thi Tam, Do Nam Trung and independent author Pham Doan Trang were sentenced under articles 88 and 117 of Vietnam’s Criminal ...

  Bloomberg Simon Case, the civil servant spearheading the investigation into whether the prime minister’s office and other government departments hosted lockdown-breaking parties last year, has stepped back from the role following reports that he hosted a similar event at the time. In a statement, Downing Street said Case had recused himself from the process to “ensure the ongoing investigation ...