Month: June 2023

Weak China manufacturing data adds to pressure on economy

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Receive free Chinese economy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese economy news every morning. Manufacturing activity has contracted in China for the third consecutive month, adding to pressure on Beijing’s policymakers to tackle a slowdown across the world’s second-largest economy. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index was 49 in June, slightly up from 48.8 in May, but still showing a month-on-month contraction in activity. While China’s economy is growing compared with last year, when the government’s three-year crusade against Covid-19 reached its…

Pakistan and IMF reach $3bn rescue funding deal

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Receive free Pakistan’s economy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Pakistan’s economy news every morning. Pakistan has reached a deal for $3bn in short-term financing from the IMF following months of tense negotiations, offering the crisis-hit economy a reprieve as the government fights to avert a possible default. The IMF announced on Thursday that it had reached a staff-level, or preliminary, agreement with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government for nine months of financing under a so-called standby arrangement. The deal has to be…

Japanese yen falls to 7-month low against dollar

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Receive free Yen updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Yen news every morning. Japan’s yen declined against the dollar on Friday, briefly touching a threshold last crossed seven months ago and reigniting speculation that authorities in Tokyo were moving closer to an intervention to support the currency. The yen fell about 0.2 per cent to ¥145.07 a dollar in morning trading in Asia, crossing the ¥145 level for the first time since mid-November and close to the ¥145.8 level that prompted Japan’s finance…

Myanmar Junta-Aligned Militia Defect to Rebels During Heavy Clashes

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BANGKOK, THAILAND – Myanmar anti-coup fighters briefly seized several border outposts after junta-aligned militia defected and joined the rebels, sparking days of heavy clashes, state media reported Thursday. Fighting has ravaged swaths of the country since the military’s 2021 putsch, with some established ethnic rebel groups training and fighting alongside newer People’s Defense Forces against the junta. Rugged Kayah state on the border with Thailand has become a resistance hotspot, hosting thousands of democracy protesters turned PDF fighters. Five border posts in the state manned by Border Guard Force (BGF)…

Putin ‘Somewhat Weakened’ by Mutiny, Trump Says

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WASHINGTON – Former U.S. President Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Thursday that Putin has been “somewhat weakened” by an aborted mutiny and that now is the time for the United States to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. Speaking expansively about foreign policy in a telephone interview with Reuters, the front-runner in opinion polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination also said China should be given a 48-hour deadline to get out of what sources familiar with the matter…

Myanmar junta sentences LGBTQ activist to 10 years in prison

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Mynamar’s military junta this week sentenced a male LGBTQ activist to 10 years in prison on Wednesday on charges of terrorism, activists and students told Radio free Asia. Justin Min Hein, president of the LGBTQ Union in the country’s central Mandalay region, was a leader of several anti-junta activities including a strike, flash protests, and other organized campaigns in Mandalay prior to his arrest. He was convicted of violating the Anti-Terrorism Act, said activist Saw Han Nway Oo. She said Justin Min Hein was in poor health. “I’m worried about…

China’s Waning Leverage Over SKorea Lessens Chances of Retaliation Against THAAD, Experts Say

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WASHINGTON – China’s waning economic leverage over South Korea is making Beijing less likely to retaliate significantly against Seoul’s normalization of the U.S. THAAD anti-missile defense system, experts say. South Korea “will take follow-up measures to normalize the [THAAD] base” and “to resolve the inconvenient situation” for American soldiers, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesperson Jeon Ha-kyu said at a news briefing Tuesday in Seoul. Normalization is the process of turning an ad hoc installation at a golf course into a military base that has operational, support and living facilities for…

Trump says Putin is ‘somewhat weakened’ by aborted mutiny

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Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of Vladimir Putin, said on Thursday that the Russian president has been “somewhat weakened” by an aborted mutiny and that the US should use this moment to negotiate a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. “I want people to stop dying over this ridiculous war,” Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview. On Ukraine, Trump did not rule out that the Kyiv government might have to concede some territory to Russia in order to stop the war, which began with Russian forces invading Ukraine 16…

US Shoots Down Chinese Calls to Lift Sanctions

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WASHINGTON —Renewed calls by Chinese officials for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for open lines of communication with the U.S. military are echoing into a diplomatic abyss, even as tensions between the two superpowers continue to mount. The Pentagon on Thursday rejected the demand, arguing there is no good reason for high-level Chinese military officials to avoid conversations with their U.S. counterparts. “From our perspective, there are no obstacles to keeping open lines of communication,” the Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, told reporters, responding to a question…