Chinese authorities have severely restricted movement of citizens around the country to stop the spread of the coronavirus infection, Xinhua reported. Authorities across mainland China, 31 provinces, have urged citizens not to travel to regions with moderate or high risk of COVID-19 infection or not to leave the region of residence at all unless absolutely necessary. On Tuesday, August 3, 71...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has made a historic decision to boost recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and allocated $650 billion in additional reserve assets. The statement is published on the organisation's website. It is noted that the Executive Board approved the allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) - that is, the IMF's non-cash unit of account, the value of which is...

US pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna are raising the prices of their coronavirus vaccines for EU countries, reports the Financial Times (FT) citing supply contracts. According to the newspaper, Pfizer has upped the price of its vaccine by over 25%: a dose now costs €19.50 versus €15.5 previously.  As for Moderna, the manufacturer has increased the price by more than 10%: in the...

Top ten US pension funds remain significant investors in the big corporations contributing the most to pollution, Bloomberg writes. Thus, it appears that organisations claiming to pay attention to environmental issues are sponsoring damage to the planet. Analysts put the associated investment at around $40 billion, meaning that nine percent of the total investment is made by the 20 high-carbon...

The cost of hosting the Tokyo Olympics, according to Japanese government auditors, exceeds $20 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Thus, the current games will be the most expensive summer Olympics in history. Previously, Japanese authorities reported that the Olympics cost $15.4 billion. The final sum is almost three times bigger than the original forecast of the cost of the Olympics,...

Executives at Philip Morris International, the world's largest tobacco company, said the UK should act on cigarettes as it does on petrol-powered cars - ban them in the next ten years. According to The Daily Telegraph, this was announced by CEO André Calantzopoulos and chairman Jacek Olzak. At the same time, they praised the UK government's "progressive" approach to regulating the market for...

The UK government is set to sell another stake in its NatWest Group (formerly The Royal Bank of Scotland Group). The cabinet unveiled a plan under which the sale of shares is due to start in August and will last 12 months until August 2022. It has not been disclosed how much stake in NatWest will be sold, there is only an upper limit - no more than 15% of the bank's listed shares will be sold....

The extreme heat and outages at nuclear power plants promise huge losses for South Korea's economy. To avoid overloads in the energy system, the country's authorities are urging citizens and the industrial sector to reduce electricity consumption and stop using air conditioners, Bloomberg wrote. The Korean meteorological administration warned that the air will get as hot as 38 degrees Celsius in...

The Chinese authorities have abolished the "one family, two children" policy and now families are allowed to have three children. This is stated in the decision of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, quoted by Xinhua. The decision will help address the demographic challenges posed by an ageing population. According to statements by the Communist Party Central Committee, it will...