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Bloomberg South Korea retaliated against Japan for what it called an “irrational and excessive” request for its citizens to voluntarily quarantine themselves, as Tokyo’s outbreak-control measures renewed tensions between the neighbours. South Korea is raising its advisory for all of Japan to Level 2, or “refrain from travel,” first deputy foreign minister Cho Se-young said in a statement. It also ...

Bloomberg Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bloc dropped to its weakest on record, with her party embroiled in a leadership contest and Europe’s largest economy flirting with recession. If a general election were held this Sunday, Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, would together garner 26%, down one percentage point from a month earlier, according to a ...

Bloomberg Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy defended a cabinet reshuffle that unnerved investors and dismayed voters who’d backed him to clean up the country’s notoriously murky post-Soviet politics. The revamp swapped young newcomers picked to sever ties with the past for experienced hands whose task is to revive stuttering reforms. The problem is that, in one of Europe’s most corrupt nations, ...

Bloomberg Iraq will halt border trade with Iran and Kuwait between March 8 and 15 to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the country’s health minister Jaafar Sadiq Allawi said in a televised press conference. Sea- and air-borne trade will continue as long as personnel and goods involved have the necessary paperwork from their originating countries to show that they ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s dominant broadcaster cut a current affairs program that had satirised the police amid a citywide shortage of protective gear against the coronavirus, prompting fresh warnings about press freedoms in the former British colony. The broadcaster, Television Broadcasts Ltd, cut local media outlet RTHK’s controversial satire programme “Headliner” — which had earlier prompted a complaint from Hong Kong’s ...

Bloomberg A group of economists have cautioned India’s government against clubbing data collection for its controversial citizens’ register with the census exercise, saying it could have implications for the nation’s statistical system. The census is a basic household and population list based on anonymous data, whereas there are fears the National Population Register could be used to question a person’s ...

Bloomberg China’s exports fell more than expected in the first two months of this year as the coronavirus outbreak led to extended holidays, depressed factory output, and blocked transport and movement across the country. Imports also declined, although increases in commodities purchases offset some of that. The drop in exports was a bigger-than-expected 17.2% in dollar terms, while imports declined ...

Bloomberg India is seeking preliminary bids for the privatisation of state-run refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp as Prime Minister Narendra Modi speeds up asset sales to help plug the budget gap. The government plans to sell about 1.15 billion shares, its entire stake of roughly 53%, according to a memorandum. It’s inviting both domestic and foreign suitors in the private or ...

Bloomberg Thailand is hindering Chinese tourists because of the novel coronavirus outbreak, normally an unthinkable step for a country that relies on their spending for economic growth. The government signalled that it prefers arrivals from China, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, Iran and Italy to self-quarantine for 14 days to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 disease. They also have ...

Bloomberg The US trade deficit narrowed by more than expected at the start of the year ahead of broader supply-chain disruptions from the coronavirus that have since hit businesses dependent on shipments from China. The overall US deficit in goods and services trade shrank to $45.3 billion in January, from $48.6 billion in the prior month, according to data released ...