Headlines

The Bank of Japan on Friday highlighted the need to enhance its research and analytical capabilities in the first medium-term strategic plan compiled under academic-turned governor Kazuo Ueda, who took office in April last year, Reuters reported. “The Bank will enhance its capabilities in policy-making, research and analysis in fulfilling its mission of achieving price and financial stability,” the BOJ said, outlining key principles of its business operations from fiscal 2024 through 2028.

Newcastle United football club co-owner Amanda Staveley on Monday lost a London High Court battle with a Greek shipping tycoon over a historic debt of nearly 3.5 million pounds ($4.4 million), ThePrint reported. Staveley, who owns 10% of the Premier League side with her husband, denied she was liable to Victor Restis for a sum that had snowballed with interest to over 36 million pounds. The total bill had included around 31 million pounds in interest, accruing at 505,000 pounds per day.

Danish company Scandinavia Farms Invest has gone bankrupt after only a few years and at least half a billion danish crowns invested, ScandAsia reported. Scandinavian Farm Invest has been running a big pig farm between Beijing and Shanghai. It had been one of the most effective farms in the country before everything started to go wrong. It wasn’t just one drop that made the cup overflow, but many things that started to go wrong for pig production in China. Tricky market conditions included an increase in the price of the feed, while the price of pig meat has decreased.

The number of people living in poverty in Italy rose in 2023 to its highest level in about a decade, data showed on Monday, despite an economic rebound since COVID-linked restrictions were eased, Reuters reported. Those living in “absolute poverty” — who were unable to buy essential goods and services — rose to 5.75 million, or 9.8% percent of the population, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported. That's up marginally from 9.7% in 2022 and the highest since the current data series began in 2014.

Farmers drove dozens of tractors in a slow-motion convoy towards Britain’s Parliament on Monday to protest post-Brexit rules and trade deals that they say are endangering livelihoods and food security, the Associated Press reported. Supporters of the campaign groups Save British Farming and Fairness for Farmers of Kent rolled from southeast England and through southern districts of the capital, bound for Parliament Square, where dozens of supporters waited to welcome them.

Australia’s highly indebted households appear well-placed to continue riding out the pain of high interest rates and soaring living costs, with even the most vulnerable in a position to continue servicing mortgages, the Reserve Bank of Australia said Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. In its latest report card on financial stability, the RBA said that while high inflation and interest rates have put pressure on household budgets over the past two years, nearly all borrowers continue to service their debts on schedule.

A proposal by France, Denmark and Sweden to restrict used-clothing exports from the European Union could hurt the clothing resale industry in Kenya, which employs 2 million Kenyans, a representative of second-hand clothes sellers said, Reuters reported. The EU exported 1.4 million tonnes of used textiles in 2022, more than twice as much as in 2000 according to U.N. trade data. Exports to developing countries can lead to pollution when clothes that can not be resold end up in dumps, the EU has said.