Business

A train pulls into the Clark Street and Lake Street Blue Line stop, where a man doused a woman in liquid and set her on fire on the train in Chicago. AP
December 19, 2025

Illinois secures US$1.5 billion to elevate bus and trains

Illinois’ public transit systems got a US$1.5-billion annual infusion on Friday as Governor JB Pritzker signed a law overhauling Chicago’s web of buses and trains, sparing it from devastating service…
Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi speaks to reporters at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo. (AP)
December 19, 2025

Quarterly ‘tankan’ survey shows slight improvement as Bank of Japan weighs a rate hike

A quarterly survey of major Japanese manufacturers released Monday shows business sentiment improving to its best level in four years, even after President Trump raised tariffs on goods from the…
AP Author Sophie Kinsella shops in the children’s section at Bergdorf Goodman in New York in 2010.
December 19, 2025

Author who sold 45m ‘Shopaholic’ novels dies

Writer Sophie Kinsella, whose effervescent rom com Confessions of a Shopaholic sparked a million-selling series, died on December 10, her family said. She was 55 and had been diagnosed with brain…
AP Tokyo Tower is visible amid tall buildings as a container ship leaves a cargo terminal in Tokyo, April 2025.
December 19, 2025

Japan exports climbed in November

Japan’s exports climbed 6.0 per cent in November from a year earlier, with shipments to the United States rising for the first time since March as uncertainties over tariffs abated following a trade…
US President Donald Trump in the White House, Dec. 15, 2025, in Washington DC, USA (AP Photo)
December 19, 2025

How a Trump Media US$1 billion deal with crypto firm exposes potential conflict of interest

Crypto.com was under siege. For more than a year, the firm had been investigated by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, part of an aggressive push to regulate the largely unregulated…
AP The office of social media firm Reddit in New York, USA.
December 19, 2025

Reddit challenges Australia’s world-first law banning children under 16 from social media

Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a court challenge to Australia’s world first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most popular social media…
In this July 21, 2020 file photo, a man opens social media app TikTok on his cell phone, in Islamabad, Pakistan.
December 19, 2025

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AP Virginia Giuffre holds a news conference outside a Manhattan court in New York, August 2019.
December 19, 2025

Epstein accuser’s memoir sells 1m copies worldwide

A posthumous memoir by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s best known accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has sold one-million copies worldwide two months after its release. Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced…
Jared Kushner son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
December 18, 2025

Trump’s son-in-law pulls out of Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros Discovery

A private equity firm owned by President Donald Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, is no longer backing Paramount’s hostile acquisition bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the firm confirmed on Tuesday.…