Dubai / WAM Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced the provision of free bus rides to visitors of Expo 2020 aboard Expo Riders buses from 9 locations in the UAE. These include three in Abu Dhabi, two in Sharjah and one location in each of Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah and Al Ain. Thus, all Expo Riders public bus ...

Almost 47 million people voted in the German parliamentary election last weekend. It was the closest vote since 2002; the center-left Social Democrats beat the conservative Christian Democratic bloc for first place by about 1.8 million votes. Party leaders will need every ounce of their negotiating skill to form the next government. Imagine how the outcome could have been swayed ...

There it is again: Another automaker makes a big announcement about its electrification plans with a battery manufacturer. Going by previous proclamations, that’s not just ambitious but far-fetched. Ford Motor Co and SK Innovation Co announced they’re partnering to spend $11.4 billion on three electric car battery plants across the US, making it the most sizable investment in the automaker’s ...

Singapore is very proud of its reputation for technocratic excellence. In recent months, government officials have tried to tackle the country’s most pressing question — how to live with Covid-19 — by scrutinising, modeling and projecting data, as if staring hard enough at those little gray-rimmed boxes on Excel would produce the answer. The trouble with this strategy is that ...

Japan’s outgoing prime minister gave his successor, Fumio Kishida, a gift. In one of his last acts, Yoshihide Suga will lift emergency pandemic restrictions that have hampered the country’s most economically vital regions. It gets progressively harder for the new leader from there. Kishida emerged from a four-way ballot on Wednesday to become leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party ...

Bloomberg The top US military leaders pointed rare criticism at key decisions by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden which they said undermined Afghanistan’s military and made it harder for American troops to remain as the nation’s government collapsed. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Trump’s 2020 peace deal with the Taliban had a ...

Bloomberg Myanmar’s Covid-19 outbreak has pushed more people into poverty, and the most vulnerable sections of the society may face “extreme deprivation” in the coming months, according to the UN World Food Program. “We’re concerned that the cumulative impact is putting pressure on the most vulnerable segments of society,” the food agency’s Country Director Stephen Anderson said in a Bloomberg ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank injected liquidity into the financial system for a ninth day in the longest run since December as it sought to meet a surge in seasonal demand for cash. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) pumped in 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) of cash with 14-day reverse repurchase agreements, resulting in a net injection of 40 billion ...

Bloomberg UK consumers have just one year left to spend about $32 billion of paper 20- and 50-pound notes as the Bank of England (BOE) withdraws them from circulation. The notes, which have been superseded by polymer equivalents featuring artist JMW Turner and mathematician Alan Turing, will no longer be accepted in shops after September 30, 2022, the BOE said ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s central bank held its key interest rate unchanged amid optimism that an economic rebound will hold, as Southeast Asia’s second largest economy loosens growth-stifling restrictions and virus cases ease. The Bank of Thailand voted unanimously on Wednesday to hold one-day repurchase rate at a record-low 0.5% for an 11th straight meeting, as predicted by 19 of 22 economists ...