World

Japanese manufacturers turned less positive about their business conditions in January, in a sign the economy faces pressure from the Omicron variant as well as rising energy and raw material costs, the Reuters Tankan poll showed. Manufacturers and service sector firms were more optimistic about the coming three months, the …

Poor residents who cannot afford smartphones should be given one, the HCMC Department of Information and Communications has proposed. It has argued that the goal of digital transformation can be achieved only when the administration, the economy and the society transform at the same time. To enable digitalization of the …

The National Assembly approved Tuesday a 729 km (453 miles) expansion to the eastern part of Vietnam’s North-South Expressway. The extension received 93.99 percent votes from 474 legislators, allowing the government to spend VND146.990 trillion (almost $6.5 billion) of the state budget to implement 12 projects on the expansion. The …

A child was killed and six others wounded after a bomb exploded on a public bus in the insurgency-plagued southern Philippines on Tuesday, authorities said, but no group has claimed responsibility. Police said the explosion happened as the bus was traveling along a highway near Cotabato City on Mindanao island, …

The Health Ministry confirmed 16,019 domestic Covid-19 patients on Tuesday in all 63 cities and provinces, raising the tally in the fourth wave since last April to 1,914,089 cases. The three localities with the highest numbers of cases are Hanoi with 2,884 cases, the central Khanh Hoa Province with 782 …

Some 7,500 students have dropped out of schools in HCMC to return to their hometowns after eight months of online classes, the Department of Education and Training said. Trinh Duy Trong, head of the department’s politics and ideology department, said Monday most are primary school students. Surveys at schools found …

Dong Nai Province has called on workers not to return home for the upcoming Lunar New Year amid complicated pandemic developments. Provincial authorities told the Labor Union and management boards of industrial zones to call on workers to stay back this Lunar New Year holiday, which will last for over …

The United States reported 1.35 million new coronavirus infections on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, the highest daily total for any country in the world as the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing. The previous record was 1.03 million cases on Jan. 3. …

China has ordered the cancellation of more than two dozen scheduled flights from the United States in recent weeks after numerous passengers tested positive for Covid-19 after arriving in China. China’s aviation regulator has mandated the cancellations of eight total scheduled U.S. passenger airline flights for Shanghai under its Covid-19 …

The Trung Luong – My Thuan Expressway is set to open to traffic on Jan. 22, just in time for the Lunar New Year, or Tet. Nguyen Tan Dong, CEO of BOT Trung Luong – My Thuan JSC, the expressway builder, said Monday that the main parts of the highway …