Author name: admin

Singapore forged ahead with efforts to formulate a digital-assets hub in 2024, while rival financial center Hong Kong has struggled to gain traction. Singapore doled out 13 cryptocurrency licenses in 2024 to a range of operators including top exchanges OKX and Upbit, as well as global heavyweights Anchorage, BitGo and GSR. That’s more than double the licenses awarded by the city-state the previous year. A similar licensing regime in Hong Kong has been slow to progress. Source link

Washington – Nippon Steel’s $15 billion bid for U.S. Steel has been referred to U.S. President Joe Biden, a White House spokesman has said, giving the president 15 days to decide on a tie-up he has previously said he opposes. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security risks, referred the bid to Biden after it was unable to reach a consensus. “We received the CFIUS evaluation and the President will review it,” White House spokesperson said. President-elect Donald Trump, set to retake the office on Jan.20, has also opposed the deal, which was first announced last December. Source link

A gauge of Japan’s startup stocks is headed for its longest run of annual losses on record as the threat of higher interest rates adds to a list of issues keeping some investors away from the sector. The Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market 250 Index, formerly known as the Mothers Index, is down about 11% so far this year and set for its fourth yearly loss, the longest slump for compiled data going back to 2000. In contrast, the broader Topix has gained 15% as banks and life insurers rose on anticipation their earnings will benefit from higher borrowing costs. The downtrend for startups could continue as the Bank of Japan seeks to hike interest rates, making it more expensive for new companies to finance research and development. The yen’s recent slump to a five-month low against the dollar has also shifted attention toward Japan’s exporters and away from startups, which mainly consist of companies that rely on domestic revenue. Source link

Douma, Syria – Two Syrian doctors and a nurse said in a series of interviews over the weekend that Bashar Assad’s government coerced them into providing false testimony to international investigators after a deadly 2018 chlorine attack. The three, who treated the wounded at a field hospital in the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus after the April 7, 2018, attack, said they were summoned to national security headquarters in the capital. “I was told … that they knew where my family is in Damascus,” said orthopedic surgeon Mohammed al-Hanash, giving public testimony which would have been impossible before the fall of Assad’s government on Dec. 8. Source link

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise threat to retake control of the Panama Canal and his expansionist declaration that the United States should own Greenland signals that the incoming president will pursue a foreign policy unbound by diplomatic niceties. As Trump prepares to take office on Jan. 20, his aides have been preparing him to deal with two foreign policy crises: war in Ukraine and multiple conflicts in the Middle East, both of which the president-elect has promised to speedily resolve. But on Sunday, Trump was more focused on making threats against U.S. allies like Panama and Denmark, which controls Greenland as an overseas territory. In previous weeks, it has been Canada which has had to weather his trolling that it should become the 51st state of the United States. Source link

Jerusalem – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday vowed to retaliate against Yemen’s Houthi rebels after they fired a missile at Tel Aviv, warning that Israel would target what he described as the last remaining arm of “Iran’s axis of evil.” The Houthis struck Israel’s commercial hub on Saturday with what they claimed was a ballistic missile, injuring 16 people and forcing many to leave their homes following the pre-dawn attack. “As we acted with force against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis … with force, determination and sophistication,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. Source link

Syria’s leadership isn’t the only aspect of the country to be changing as a result of this month’s toppling of longtime dictator, Bashar Assad. The blurring of its borders is also underway — from Israel to the southwest and Turkey to the north. Israel’s military wasted no time advancing on Syria after Assad was overthrown by Islamist-led rebels two weeks ago, with troops moving eastward into a buffer zone established by a ceasefire between the two countries 50 years ago. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wary of a new threat after more than a year fighting Iran-backed groups Hamas and Hezbollah in the region. “Israel will not permit jihadi groups to fill that vacuum and threaten Israeli communities,” Netanyahu’s office said last week. It described the deployment as temporary until a new Syrian administration — now led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, a former affiliate of al-Qaida — commits to the 1974 agreement. Source link

Manila – The Philippine military said Monday it plans to acquire the U.S. Typhon missile system to protect its maritime interests, some of which overlap with regional power China. The U.S. Army deployed the midrange missile system in the northern Philippines earlier this year for annual joint military exercises with its longtime ally, but decided to leave it there despite criticism by Beijing that it was destabilizing to Asia. Since then, it has been used by Philippine forces to train for its operation. “It is planned to be acquired because we see its feasibility and its functionality in our concept of archipelagic defense implementation,” Philippine Army chief Lt. Gen. Roy Galido told a news conference. “I’m happy to report to our fellow countrymen that your army is developing this capability for the interest of protecting our sovereignty,” he said, adding the total number to be acquired would depend on “economics.” As a rule, it takes at least two or more years for the Philippine military to acquire a new weapons system from the planning stage, Galido said, adding it was not yet budgeted for 2025. The land-based “midrange capability” missile launcher, developed by U.S. firm Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Army, has a range of 480 kilometers (300 miles), though a longer-range version is in development. The presence of the U.S. missile system on Philippine soil had angered Beijing, whose forces have engaged in escalating confrontations in recent months with the Philippines over disputed reefs and waters in the South China Sea. Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun warned in June that the Typhon deployment was “severely damaging regional security and stability.” Source link

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has announced a slew of picks to fill key Pentagon positions, but his choice to be the Defense Department’s policy chief may be the most consequential for Japan and the region. Trump on Sunday announced that he had picked former defense official Elbridge Colby to be the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy — a key post that provides national security advice and support on strategy, planning and management of international alliances and partnerships to the defense secretary and department leadership. Colby has said that the U.S. military must focus its attention on China and the Indo-Pacific region, while repeatedly pushing for Japan to quickly and dramatically ramp up defense spending to around 3% of gross domestic product. Source link

Every week or so, scientists issue another warning that the H5N1 bird flu is inching closer to exploding into a pandemic. Despite having contended with a pandemic that broke out less than five years ago, the U.S. has no solid plan to handle a new one — nor have our leaders done anything to incorporate the lessons learned from the government’s less-than-ideal handling of COVID-19. Too many Americans died from COVID-19 because the public health community took too long to issue warnings, was slow to create tests to assess the situation and was sluggish in shifting its response to fit the data on airborne transmission. The much-criticized lockdowns could have been less disruptive and saved more lives had they been periodically adjusted as data changed on who was most at risk and which activities were riskiest. Source link