Brussels told European industries producing green technologies, such as solar and wind energy, that obtaining permits and manufacturing will be made easier under plans accused by some as protectionism.The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, wants at least 40 percent of green tech to be produced in the EU by 2030.The target featured in plans for a Net Zero Industry Act published on Thursday to support the EU’s bid to become a “climate neutral” economy with zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.The commission hopes to achieve its objectives by ensuring businesses obtain permits faster, and says public tenders would be…
Author: Mike Harrison
The summit between South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan’s Fumio Kishida in Tokyo – the first visit to Japan by a South Korean president in 12 years – highlighted how the two US allies have been brought closer by North Korea’s frequent missile launches and growing concern over China’s more muscular role on the international stage.The urgency of the regional security situation – and the threat posed by North Korea – were underscored hours before Yoon’s arrival, when North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed in the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan.Washington hailed the summit,…
By Nhan  March 17, 2023 | 06:25am GMT+7 I’m a 54-year-old Vietnamese living abroad who recently married a 36-year-old woman. We met 4 years ago when I was traveling in Vietnam. Before Covid, I used to visit Vietnam twice a year. I dated my wife for a year before proposing. We had only met each other twice while dating. I’m a traditional man, so in my opinion, a wife should be a virgin before marriage.We were preparing the documents to register our marriage when Covid hit. Flights were limited so I couldn’t go back to Vietnam to sign the marriage…
After about an hour of hiding all her tables and chairs in her house, Han, the owner of a 20-year-old sidewalk cafe on the capital’s most famous lake, goes back out to the street and arranges everything back on the sidewalk as usual .Han, 45, said she was too familiar with Hanoi’s sidewalk clearance campaigns.”Every year there are one or two periods like this, which can last for a few weeks or several months. But when it’s over, everything comes back to normal and nothing changed,” she said.Hanoi is conducting a sidewalk cleanup campaign by removing obstacles such as billboards…
By Reuters  March 16, 2023 | 06:16pm GMT+7 South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon-hee arrive at Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport) in Tokyo, Japan March 16, 2023. Photo by Reuters/Issei Kato Japan will end export controls on materials for semiconductors destined for South Korea, and Seoul will withdraw a complaint filed with the World Trade Organization, the countries announced Thursday. Trade ministries from the two sides made the announcement as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived in Tokyo for a summit with Japan’s prime minister intended to rebuild ties between the two neighbours.Tense relations…
K-pop legendary boyband Super Junior. Photo courtesy of Super Junior The PARKROYAL Saigon Hotel confirmed that it has dismissed a staff member who posted negative comments online about K-pop mega boyband Super Junior. “We have just been that a staff member posted on his personal Facebook page a very unprofessional and negative comment regarding the K-pop group Super Junior, who we had the pleasure of serving this past Saturday,” General Manager EJ Mac Ewan wrote on the hotel’s official Facebook on Wednesday.”This associate has now been released from his employment immediately, as this comment is against our Standards of Service,…
By AFP  March 16, 2023 | 02:11pm GMT+7 Commuters cross a zebra crossing, amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic in Seoul, South Korea, February 3, 2021. Photo by Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji The number of South Koreans who tied the knot last year hit a record low, figures showed Thursday, compounding looming demographic woes in a country with the world’s lowest birth rate. Some 192,000 couples got married last year, according to the data released by Statistics Korea Thursday, down by more than 40 percent from a decade earlier in 2012, when 327,000 couples had wed.This is the lowest number of marriages…
A vendor sells durians at a street stall in Bangkok. Photo by AFP Police in Thailand have launched what is believed to be the country’s first durian guarding scheme after thieves stole 1 million baht ($29,000) worth of the spiky fruit from a plantation in the eastern province of Trat. Ao Cho police station in Muang district is offering the scheme following complaints from local farmers that thieves were sneaking into their plantations at night and plundering ripe durians from the trees, The Nation Thailand reported.The first to sign up for the guarding scheme was a 55-year-old farmer at the…
In its statement early Thursday, Credit Suisse said it would exercise its option to borrow from the Swiss National Bank up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($54 billion). That followed assurances from authorities in the private banking hub on Wednesday that Credit Suisse met “the capital and liquidity requirements imposed on systemically important banks” and that it could access central bank liquidity if needed. Credit Suisse is the first major global bank to be given such a lifeline since the 2008 financial crisis – though central banks have extended liquidity more generally to banks during times of market stress including…
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told Reuters that the company had recently heard from the US Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which demanded that the Chinese owners of the app sell their shares, and said otherwise they would face a possible US ban of the video app. The Journal said 60% of ByteDance shares are owned by global investors, 20% by employees and 20% by its founders. CFIUS, a powerful national security body in 2020 had unanimously recommended that ByteDance divest TikTok. “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change…