Author: admin@primenews

Diversification away from China is increasing, and it doesn’t just affect foreign companies, according to HSBC CEO Noel Quinn. “I spoke to our CEO just recently in the last week in China, and he’s seen 70% growth in activity in helping Chinese clients diversify their business model outside of the land mass of China,” Quinn said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum on Wednesday. “So that’s an interesting shift.” Quinn, who was appointed CEO in 2020, said data showed there was more activity on “Chinese clients going out of China at this point in time than there is activity into China.” He…

Australia’s top court has ruled that the government’s power to detain a person indefinitely in immigration detention is unlawful. The landmark ruling overturns a 20-year-old precedent that has been central to Australia’s border policies. It could trigger the release of dozens of people in immigration detention who cannot return to their home countries, the Human Rights Law Centre says. The solicitor general has warned it could also lead to compensation claims. The case, heard before the High Court of Australia on Wednesday, involved a stateless Rohingya man who faced the prospect of lifelong detention because no country would resettle him…

David Tennant bounds into the room, friendly, super articulate and energetic. The actor and Doctor Who favourite, regularly voted the best Doctor by fans, is set to appear once again as the Time Lord in the forthcoming 60th anniversary specials. The ongoing actors’ strike prevents him from talking about those (Doctor Who is now a BBC/Disney co-production and US actors’ union Sag-Aftra has been on strike since July). But we’re together, in a room full of books and leftover croissants – clearly actors need sustenance – to talk about Shakespeare, a playwright Tennant calls a “genius” who “had a particular…

Malaysia’s leader Anwar Ibrahim has said his nation will maintain ties with Hamas and will “not punish” the group. Malaysians should “unanimously back” the Palestinian cause, the prime minister told parliament on Tuesday. Mr Anwar was responding to a proposal by US lawmakers to sanction Hamas’s foreign supporters. Analysts say this is also politically expedient in a country where support for Palestinians has long been bipartisan as well as widespread. An opposition lawmaker had asked Mr Anwar about the Malaysian government’s stand after the US House of Representatives last week voted to sanction foreign supporters of Hamas and the Palestinian…

A suspect in the confrontation that led to the death of a Jewish man who was injured during dueling Israeli and Palestinian rallies in California called 911 to seek medical help for the victim and has been “cooperative,” officials said Tuesday. Authorities declined to identify the suspect or classify the incident as a hate crime, saying they are working to piece together what led to the dispute. Paul Kessler, 69, died Monday, one day after pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies in Thousand Oaks, California, where he got into a “physical altercation” with “counter-protestor(s),” witnesses told the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. Kessler was at the rally…

She’d been living in Miami for around three decades and had built a life that she loved. But Julie Balzano, originally from Long Island, found herself struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living in the “Magic City,” recently ranked as the 10th most expensive city in the world on Swiss private bank Julius Baer’s annual Lifestyle Index. After selling her home in 2021 with the intention of downsizing, Balzano couldn’t find anything within her price range and decided to rent a townhouse for a year in order to “let the market stabilize” and eventually “buy back in.” However,…

US public health officials are calling for urgent action to curb an alarming increase in the number of babies born with syphilis. In infants, syphilis can be a severe, disabling and sometimes life-threatening infection. When babies get it in the womb from an infected mother, it’s called congenital syphilis. Each congenital syphilis case is considered a “never event” – a tragic outcome that should never happen – because it’s nearly always preventable if it is caught and treated in time. A single course of penicillin, given at least a month before the end of a pregnancy, nearly always prevents infected mothers from…

The resilient consumer has kept the US economic engine running, but it’s coming at a big cost: Americans are piling up record credit card balances, and more and more are falling behind on those payments. During the third quarter, credit card balances hit a fresh high of $1.08 trillion, rising $48 billion from the prior quarter and leaping by a record $154 billion from the year before, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit released Tuesday. The year-over-year increase is the largest since the New York Fed started tracking that data in 1999.…

Nintendo and Sony Pictures are making a live-action film of much beloved video game series The Legend of Zelda. Renowned video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and Avi Arad of the Spider-Man trilogy will co-produce, with The Maze Runner’s Wes Ball directing. There is no word yet on who will make up the cast, or the plot of the film. The Legend of Zelda centres on the exploits of an elf-like character named Link who battles the demon king Ganon to save Princess Zelda. It is among the most successful franchises of Japan’s Nintendo, alongside Super Mario Bros. Since its debut…

While the White House was not up for grabs – that comes next year – it was still a big night for US politics on Tuesday. Voters in some states went to the polls to decide their governor and who controls their legislature, while others considered changes to abortion rights. Ballots are being counted and results are still coming in, but here’s some of what we’ve learned so far. 1) Abortion remains a top issue Voters in Ohio backed an amendment to the state’s constitution that will guarantee abortion rights. The vote was viewed as a litmus test for whether abortion…