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Bloomberg The Philippines has eased distancing rules in public transport, allowing trains and planes to have more passengers amid the region’s worst coronavirus outbreak, the Department of Transportation said. The agency and economic managers’ proposal to increase public transport ridership and accommodate more people going back to work was approved by the government’s coronavirus task force, Transport Secretary Arthur Tugade ...

Bloomberg Afghanistan’s government and Taliban leaders began historic peace talks on Saturday in a bid to end two decades of war, in a meeting that was fraught with tension over what the insurgent group will demand in return for laying down its arms. Meeting in an enormous hotel conference room in Doha, Qatar, the two sides promised to negotiate in ...

Bloomberg The US is “deeply concerned” about 12 Hong Kong pro-democratic activists held in mainland China who have been denied access to lawyers of their choice, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The activists were arrested two weeks ago off the coast of Hong Kong by Guangdong Maritime Police. Local authorities haven’t provided information on their welfare or charges ...

Bloomberg India and China pledged to de-escalate tensions along their disputed Himalayan border after their foreign ministers met Thursday for the first time since May when the stand-off began. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, agreed that “the current situation in the border area is not in the interests of both sides,” according to a joint ...

Bloomberg Yoshihide Suga, the front-runner to become Japan’s next premier, emphasized the importance of the nation’s alliance with the US for the country’s foreign policy. “With the US-Japan alliance at the foundation, it is important for Japan to get along with other Asian nations,” Suga said in a debate in Tokyo on Saturday at the Japan National Press Club. While ...

Bloomberg Australian raids on Chinese journalists living in that country were “imperious” and “utterly appalling,” and are damaging relations between the two nations, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Australian authorities confiscated computers and phones in raids on four Chinese journalists’ homes, including that of a Xinhua employee, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. The operation was conducted by ...

Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe that South China Sea disputes must be resolved using international law, including a treaty used as the basis for a 2016 ruling that refuted China’s claims in the area. Duterte met with the Chinese official and emphasized that disputes “must be resolved peacefully in full accord with the United ...

Bloomberg The US government is paying less as it borrows more, one reason investors appear more comfortable than Congress about funding another leg of stimulus. Interest payments in the federal budget declined about 10% in the first 11 months of this fiscal year, when America was running up its biggest deficit since World War II. Over the next few years, ...

Bloomberg Rishi Sunak should extend wage support for UK workers in the hardest-hit sectors, lawmakers said amid warnings from economists, labour unions and opposition parties about a looming wave of job cuts. The chancellor of the exchequer must also devise a plan to help companies that plunged into debt as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, or risk prolonging the ...

Bloomberg Spain will seek to tax all companies that operate telecommunications services, such as calls and instant messaging, according to Telecommunications Secretary Roberto Sanchez. Under a new law proposed by the government, “all operators who provide telecommunication services without having to provide phone numbers, such as WhatsApp” and Telegram would have to register as telecommunications operators and would be taxed ...