Bloomberg The world’s most powerful economies agreed to back plans for so-called vaccine passports in a bid to pull the travel and tourism industry out of a pandemic-fuelled slump. Tourism ministers from the Group of 20 threw their weight behind the new certificates, stressing that a resumption of normal activity for the sector is crucial to global economic recovery, according ...

Bloomberg Toronto’s housing market last month posted the sharpest drop since the early weeks of the Covid-19 crisis, as buyers and sellers took a breather from a frenetic pace amid surging infections and renewed lockdown measures. The number of properties changing hands in Canada’s largest city declined 20% in April on an annualized basis from the month before, while the ...

Bloomberg The US job market is suffering from growing pains as the economy rapidly reopens. While economists are optimistic about future growth, employers are facing hiring challenges as well as supply chain disruptions and higher costs. The jobs report from the Labour Department showed the US added 266,000 jobs in April, far short of the 1 million gain economists had ...

Bloomberg A rally in one of Asia’s best-performing stock markets is stalling amid rising virus cases at home and a rethink of the global reflation trade. Second only to Taiwan among Asia’s major benchmarks this year, Singapore’s Straits Times Index has slipped about 1% so far in May, paring 2021’s gains to around 13%. The reintroduction of social distancing rules ...

Bloomberg Asia’s high-dividend-yield stocks have emerged as winners among regional equities this year as expectations grew for the economy to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. While stocks that pay relatively large dividends are rising globally, for the most part the gains are happening in-line with the wider market. Not so in Asia though, where MSCI Inc.’s key gauge for this ...

Dubai / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, announced that the UAE’s Ramadan campaign has secured 216 million meals, more than double its target, for vulnerable groups in 30 countries across four continents. ‘100 Million Meals’ campaign, the region’s biggest food distribution drive, concluded on ...

Bloomberg The European Union (EU) and India are set to resume long-stalled talks on a free trade deal in an effort to strengthen their economic cooperation in the face of an increasingly assertive China. EU leaders will hold a virtual summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch a fresh round of negotiations that aim to reboot relations and ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Khalifa Shaheen Almarar, Minister of State, expressed the UAE’s deep concern over the violence in occupied East Jerusalem and its strong condemnation of the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the displacement of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, which resulted in the injury of a number of civilians. He stressed that the UAE strongly condemns ...

JEDDAH / WAM Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have underscored the importance of expanding and intensifying aspects of bilateral cooperation and coordination and enhancing them in various fields. This came during a meeting between His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, and Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, ...

Bloomberg Oil posted a gain this week as expectations for growing economic activity in nations from the US to Europe fueled optimism around stronger summer demand. Futures in New York advanced 2.1% this week in the first back-to-back weekly increase since early March. Fuel sales in the UK rise to the highest since the pandemic again, and in the US, ...