Month: September 2017

When Yuriko Koike split from the Liberal Democratic Party in May 2017, 10 months after she had been elected governor of Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could have been forgiven for assuming that she could be relied upon to support the national government in at least some policy areas.
After all, she had served with the LDP for 15 years, held three cabinet portfolios – including that of minister of defence under Abe – and is widely thought to hold conservative views similar to the…

Bali’s gently lowing cows, prized for their hardiness and doe-like temperament, will not become victims of the tropical island’s menacing Mount Agung volcano if villager Wayan Sudarma has any say in it.
A proud owner of 21 cows, Sudarma has been venturing daily into the no-go zone around the Indonesian volcano on a mission to rescue at least some of the estimated 20,000 cattle still grazing on its potentially lethal slopes.
Experts say that is highly risky. Fast moving hot clouds of…

ANALYSIS: Business sectors may find themselves out in the cold if they fail to seize the opportunity to communicate their concerns and outlines their aspirations for a post-Brexit UK to the government.

The headline corporate tax rate in the US would be cut from 35% to 20% under plans aiming to improve competitiveness and deliver “fiscally responsible” tax reform.

A German court has ruled that business to business (B2B) sellers which state on their website that they only sell to commercial customers do not have an obligation to conduct further buyer checks in order to avoid consumer protection regulation.

The deadly tsunami that struck northeast Japan in 2011 has carried almost 300 species of sea life thousands of kilometres across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of the United States.
In what experts are calling the longest maritime migration ever recorded, an estimated one million creatures – including crustaceans, sea slugs and sea worms – made the 7,725km journey on a flotilla of tsunami debris.
“This has turned out to be one of the biggest unplanned natural experiments…

Throughout the morning, vulcanologists at a small monitoring post on the Indonesian island of Bali go back and forth between checking instruments to detect volcanic activity and surveying visually for signs of a possible eruption of Mount Agung.
Located in the hilly village of Rendang, about 13km southwest of the mountain, the post has seen an influx of vulcanologists after the highest eruption alert was issued September 22 by the country’s Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard…

The European Commission has fined Scania €881 million after concluding that it broke EU antitrust rules.

Vanuatu on Thursday ordered the compulsory evacuation of an entire island where a huge volcano rumbled to life over the weekend, threatening a major eruption.
All 11,000 people on the island of Ambae – in the Pacific archipelago’s north – will be evacuated by October 6, Prime Minister Charlot Salwai’s office said.
Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) said it was the first time in living memory that an island’s entire population had been moved…

The leader of Thailand’s military junta said on Thursday that Yingluck Shinawatra, the prime minister he ousted three years ago, was in Dubai, having fled there last month to avoid being jailed over a rice subsidy scheme that lost billions of dollars.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army chief who led the coup, said Thailand would pursue Yingluck through diplomatic channels and police cooperation using Interpol.
His remarks came a day after a court found Yingluck guilty of criminal…