REUTERS: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Friday reported forecast-beating fourth-quarter revenues and profits, as more people shopped online for essentials because of the coronavirus lockdowns. As people stayed indoors and brick-and-mortar stores remained shut during the health crisis, online orders surged, with the company’s core commerce business rising nearly 19per […]
News
Foreign workers inside Avery Lodge dormitory along 2D Jalan Papan SINGAPORE: The number of COVID-19 cases in Singapore topped 30,000 on Friday (May 22), with 614 new cases reported as of noon. This brings the total number of cases in the country to 30,426. The vast majority of the […]
NEW DELHI: India’s cricket board will not push for the Twenty20 World Cup in Australia to be postponed but would consider staging the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the October/November slot if it becomes available, a senior BCCI official has told Reuters. This year’s IPL, which is worth almost US$530 […]
BEIJING: China will encourage the people of Taiwan to join it in opposing the island’s independence and promoting China’s “reunification”, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday (May 22), a move likely to worsen Beijing’s poor relations with Taipei. China describes Taiwan as its most sensitive and important territorial issue, […]
MELBOURNE: Tokyo Games organisers face “real problems” staging the Olympics next year as coronavirus infections continue to soar, senior international Olympic official John Coates said. Coates, Australia’s Olympic chief and head of the International Olympic Committee’s inspectorate for Tokyo, said organisers had to assume there would be no vaccine for […]
TOKYO: Japan’s central bank on Friday (May 22) offered hundreds of billions of dollars in additional lending to help small firms in the world’s third-largest economy struggling with the economic devastation wrought by coronavirus. The Bank of Japan expanded its loan programme by 30 trillion yen (US$279 billion), bringing its […]
SHANGHAI: China will severely punish the illegal hunting and trading of wild animals, it said in its government work report issued on Friday (May 22), as it tries to implement a ban imposed in January as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The pandemic has been blamed on a seafood […]
SEOUL: When South Korea’s domestic women’s golf tour held its premier event last week – without spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic – no fewer than three of the world’s top 10 players took part. The country of 52 million people has a disproportionate share of the women’s world golf […]
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made an unusually small number of public appearances in the past two months, once again going three weeks without state media reporting his attendance at a public event, according to analysts. Kim’s low profile comes as North Korea imposes anti-coronavirus measures, although […]
Military delegates leave the Great Hall of the People after a meeting ahead of National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s annual session of parliament, in Beijing, China, on Mar 4, 2019. BEIJING: China’s defence spending this year will rise 6.6 per cent from 2019, according to a report issued at the […]