Chinese authorities recently announced that the country would remove a ban on imports of Japan’s deboned beef under 30 months old starting Dec. 19. The ban was imposed amid outbreaks of mad cow disease in 2001, according to a statement jointly released by the General Administration of Customs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Inspection and quarantine requirements ...

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea are holding a trilateral summit in China this week amid feuds over trade, military maneuverings and historical animosities. Most striking has been a complex dispute between Seoul and Tokyo, while Beijing has recently sought to tone down its disagreements with its two neighbors. Economic cooperation and the North Korean nuclear threat are ...

Photo: In this long exposure photo, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Boeing Starliner crew capsule lifts off on an orbital flight test to the International Space Station from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force station, Friday, Dec. 20, 2019, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Boeing aimed to bring its Starliner crew capsule back to ...

The government has approved a US private equity firm’s takeover of UK defence and aerospace company Cobham, reports BBC. Advent International made a £4bn offer to buy Cobham in July, but it was delayed when the government intervened over national security concerns.The government announced its approval of the deal late on Friday night – which the firm’s founding family said ...

Colombia on Friday instructed Uber to stop operating after a lawsuit by a group of taxi drivers that accused the ride-sharing app of unfair business practices, reports AP. Colombia’s Superintendency of Industry and Commerce said the halt to Uber operations was taking effect immediately, though the company can appeal the decision. Uber was benefiting from a “significant advantage” that violated ...

A Ukrainian security researcher reported finding a database with the names, phone numbers and unique user IDs of more than 267 million Facebook users — nearly all U.S.-based — on the open internet. That data was likely harvested by criminals,  said researcher Bob Diachenko, an independent security consultant in  Kyiv. The database, which Diachenko discovered with a search engine, was ...

The International Monetary Fund on Thursday approved a delayed loan tranche for Ecuador, releasing nearly $500 million under a three-year aid program, reports AFP. The IMF board gave the go-ahead for a $4.2 billion loan in March to help support the oil-rich nation’s economic reforms, but massive protests lead by indigenous groups erupted in October when President Lenin Moreno scrapped ...

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover has successfully passed its first driving test, according to a release of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday. A preliminary assessment of the rover’s activities on Tuesday showed that it checked all the necessary boxes as it rolled forward and backward and pirouetted in a clean room at JPL. The next time ...

Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot agreed Wednesday to merge into a single company that will become the world’s fourth-largest automaker, a giant that could bring consumers a wider variety of cleaner vehicles at a faster pace, including more powered by electricity. The boards of the two companies signed the deal to achieve what neither was good at alone: conquering the challenges ...

Britain’s competition watchdog said Tuesday it launched a formal inquiry into Google’s takeover of cloud data analytics company Looker Data Sciences, as it intensifies scrutiny of technology deals. The Competition and Markets Authority said it had notified the two companies on Monday that it was opening an initial inquiry and would decide on Feb. 13 whether to escalate it to ...