Breaking News, Latest Philippines Headlines, World, Entertainment, Politics, Weather & Video News
HONG KONG, June 1, 2023 (AFP) – Hong Kong rolled out new rules on Thursday allowing licensed cryptocurrency exchanges to service retail customers, bucking the global trend of tightening rules after last year’s market crash. The Chinese finance hub is racing regulators around the world to lay down ground rules for crypto after high-profile failures like trading platform FTX, which led the United States to crack down on a sector worth more than $1 trillion. […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 31, 2023 (AFP) – Brazil’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent for the three months through April, an eight-year low for the period, officials said Wednesday, welcome news for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s bid to jump-start the economy. The rate was down from 8.8 percent for the period from January to March, and the lowest for February-April since 2015, when it was 8.1 percent, according to national statistics institute […]
OTTAWA, May 31, 2023 (AFP) – Canada’s economy grew by a higher-than-expected 3.1 percent in the first quarter after remaining flat in the final stretch of last year, according to official data released Wednesday. The rise was fueled by strong trade figures, mainly exports, and an increase in household spending, Statistics Canada said. Some analysts had predicted a drop in GDP in the first quarter, or only a slight rise. Exports of goods and services […]
MUMBAI, May 31, 2023 (AFP) – India’s GDP grew by 7.2 percent in the year to March, official figures showed Wednesday, boosted by services and consumption, putting it among the world’s fastest-expanding major economies. The South Asian nation is the world’s fifth-largest economy, and recently surpassed China to become the most populous country. Its growth has rebounded since the pandemic — the economy rocketed 9.1 percent in the 2021-22 financial year. But like other countries, […]
BANGUI, Central African Republic, May 30, 2023 (AFP) – The Central African Republic (CAR) has passed a law that allows foreign investment in cryptocurrencies, after last year adopting Bitcoin and its own digital currency, the Sango as legal tender. A bill was passed by acclamation, National Assembly president Simplice Mathieu Sarandji announced late Monday. The law comes after the CAR — one of the poorest countries in the world — suddenly announced in April 2022 […]
BEIJING, May 28, 2023 (AFP) – China’s first domestically produced passenger jet made its maiden commercial flight on Sunday, a milestone event in the nation’s decades-long effort to compete with Western rivals in the air. Beijing hopes the C919 commercial jetliner will challenge foreign models like the Boeing 737 MAX and the Airbus A320, though many of its parts are sourced from abroad. Its first homegrown jetliner with mass commercial potential would also cut the […]
WASHINGTON, May 26, 2023 (AFP) – The US inflation measure most closely watched by the Federal Reserve accelerated in April, official figures showed Friday, reversing a recent slowdown and raising the chance of another interest rate hike in June. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said the US central bank is taking a “data-dependent approach” to its next decision, where it will mull if another rate hike is needed to bring inflation back down to its […]
BERLIN, May 25, 2023 (AFP) – Germany fell into a recession around the turn of the year, official figures published Thursday showed, as inflation and higher interest rates curbed demand in Europe’s largest economy. Over the first three months of 2023, the economy shrank by 0.3 percent, the federal statistics agency Destatis said, downgrading an initial estimate of zero percent. Following a 0.5-percent contraction in the last three months of 2022, it was Germany’s second […]
MOSCOW, May 25, 2023 (AFP) – Russia on Thursday summoned the envoys of Germany, Sweden and Denmark over Moscow’s frustration with the lack of progress on probes into the sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines. Built to carry Russian gas to Germany, the pipelines in the Baltic Sea were ruptured by subsea explosives months after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February, 2022. Western countries have blamed the explosions under the Baltic Sea […]
LONDON, May 24, 2023 (AFP) – Britain’s annual inflation rate struck a 13-month low in April, official data showed Wednesday, but remains elevated at 8.7 percent as soaring food prices offset weaker energy costs, prolonging a cost-of-living crisis. The rate of price increases slowed from 10.1 percent in March to below double digits for the first time since August last year, the Office for National Statistics said in a statement. At 8.7 percent, UK inflation […]
WASHINGTON, May 21, 2023 (AFP) – The explosion of generative AI has taken the world by storm, but one question all too rarely comes up: Who can afford it? OpenAI bled around $540 million last year as it developed ChatGPT and says it needs $100 billion to meet its ambitions, according to industry media The Information. “We’re going to be the most capital-intensive startup in Silicon Valley history,” OpenAI’s founder Sam Altman told a panel […]
By Jonah Mandel JAFFA, Israel (AFP) – The global economic slowdown and domestic political turmoil have not impaired the long-term prospects of Israel’s vaunted hi-tech industry, officials and insiders say, despite a recent decline in hiring in the sector. Nearly 18 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product comes from the tech sector, which employs 12 percent of the workforce, generates nearly a third of its income tax and constitutes half of exports, official figures show. […]
