Japan's service activity expanded for a second straight month in December, buoyed by solid demand and business expansion, a private-sector survey showed on Monday, Reuters reported. The final au Jibun Bank Service purchasing managers' index (PMI) grew to 50.9 in December from 50.5 in November, according to the survey compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. It was lower than a flash reading of 51.4 but stayed above the 50.0 threshold separating expansion from contraction for a second straight month.

A private gauge of China’s service activity expanded at a faster clip at the end of 2024 as Beijing moved to boost domestic demand, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Caixin services purchasing managers index rose to 52.2 in December from 51.5 in November, Caixin Media Co. and S&P Global said Monday. The index has remained above the 50 mark separating contraction from expansion for two years, Caixin said. Both business activity and total new orders increased last month.

When Jeju Air’s status as South Korea’s biggest low-cost carrier seemed under threat from the merger of the country’s two biggest airlines last year, the company’s chief executive assured employees that it would “actively respond,” possibly by acquiring smaller rivals. Now, a week after a crash that killed 179 people on Dec. 29, Jeju Air’s future is clouded by even deeper questions, the New York Times reported.

For all its focus on the newest anime and latest electronics, Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood also has a lot of local history. Sadly, a tasty piece of that history is disappearing, with the news that an Akihabara curry restaurant that’s been in business for 50 years will be filing for bankruptcy, Japan Today reported. Bengal was officially founded in 1973 and started serving customers at its Akihabara curry restaurant in 1974, while also operating as a spice wholesaler.

China will sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds in 2025 to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official said on Friday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalise the faltering economy, Reuters reported. Special treasury bonds will be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da, deputy secretary-general of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) at a press conference.

Turkish inflation eased in December, likely reassuring the country’s central bank after it cut its key interest rate for the first time since 2023 last month, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 44.4% higher on year in December, the lowest since June 2023, cooling from the 47.1% a month earlier, the country’s statistics agency Turkstat said Friday.

Manufacturing conditions across much of Asia expanded in December, according to the latest surveys, but weakening confidence and soft export orders continued to weigh on outlook, the Wall Street Journal reported. The headline S&P Global manufacturing PMI for Asean indicated modest growth, though it slightly declined to close out the year. Several countries in the region led the growth, including the Philippines, where output and new orders rose sharply, both marking the largest expansion since April 2022.

China is keeping its hand firmly on the yuan, supporting the currency via the official daily reference rate after it slid to the weakest level since 2022 at year-end in offshore trading, Bloomberg News reported. The People’s Bank of China set the so-called fixing, which confines yuan’s trading onshore to a 2% range on either side, at 7.1879 per dollar on Thursday. That’s little changed from the prior reading. But it was 1,323 pips stronger than forecast in a Bloomberg survey, the largest difference since July.