“To achieve an agreement that is mutually beneficial, we engaged in very in-depth discussions with the two ministers and explored the possibility of reaching an agreement,” Akazawa told reporters after the sixth round of trade negotiations. “We further deepened discussions on issues such as expanding bilateral trade, non-tariff measures and cooperation on economic security.”
“We hope that Airbnb will choose to support their hosts in verifying their listings, instead of cancelling their bookings,” Kahlon said. “This is new ground for B.C., and we are working through ServiceBC, our short-term rental branch, and the platforms themselves to help hosts comply with the requirements.”
“Given that the strikes appear to have been directed more at the Iranian military general staff, including the head of the IRGC and senior nuclear scientists, and that the US was not involved, that suggests that what we saw today was more of a pre-emptive strike and less of a sustained military conflict,” said Robert […]
Israel closed its airspace until further notice, while Iran halted operations at its main airport in Tehran. The two states, along with neighboring countries including Iraq, have restricted and re-opened their airspaces several times since Oct. 7, 2023, when a Hamas attack on Israel sparked a wider regional conflict.
Israel conducted an air strike on the country, with Defense Minister Israel Katz calling it a “preemptive strike.” The tension weighed on markets: Oil surged, Asian stocks and US equity futures fell, and the dollar reversed earlier losses as traders dumped risk currencies.
Sperling, a former director of the National Economic Council, a White House unit that coordinates administration policy, cautioned the recent truce between the world’s biggest economies failed to address underlying structural issues. These include intellectual property rights, technology transfers and market access.
Several generations later, Beijing has made its rich reserves of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals that are abundant in the earth’s crust but hard, expensive and environmentally polluting to process, a key element of China’s economic security. In 2019, during a visit to a rare earth processing plant in Ganzhou, Xi described rare […]
China Huadian Corp., one of the country’s biggest power generators, expects total imports to slide to about 400 million tons this year, from the record 543 million tons purchased in 2024, according to Zhang Aipei, deputy director of production. Purer, high-calorie grades should be enough to fill any seasonal or regional gaps in supply, he […]
Many of China’s major minerals corporations have invested in the exploration and mining of lithium, a key component for electric vehicle batteries, in Xinjiang, Global Rights Compliance said. Xinjiang is also China’s top source of beryllium, a mineral used for aerospace, defense and telecommunications, its report said.
Policymakers are also concerned about rural incomes. Pig farmers have struggled to make ends meet this year, and are now losing about 70 yuan ($10) on each animal raised. Sow numbers, meanwhile, have climbed to 40.38 million, above the 39 million considered normal and close to levels that might trigger formal intervention.