DUBAI (BLOOMBERG) - Emirates is suspending flights to Australia's three largest cities due to "operational reasons," the world's largest airline by international passengers announced. The last flights to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will be on Jan 20 and customers for those cities will not be accepted for travel at their point of origin. Emirates did not say when the flights would resume. Australia all but closed its borders to travellers last year to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Arrivals are capped, and those who do enter have to undergo a strict quarantine for two weeks. Many of its citizens abroad have struggled to get home. Dubai, the Middle East's main business hub, locked down the city for about a month last year and Emirates grounded passenger flights. It's eased entry requirements in recent months in a bid to boost tourism.
SEOUL: Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported Friday, in a show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US president.The parade came after the five-yearly congress of the ruling Workers' Party, at which leader Kim Jong Un decried the US as his country's "foremost principal enemy"."The world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces," the official KCNA news agency said.Pictures showed at least four of the missiles with black-and-white cones being driven past flag-waving crowds, and Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment said it was a previously unseen weapon."New year, new Pukguksong," he tweeted, using the name for the North's submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).Kim oversaw the display, which included rockets with a "powerful striking capability for thoroughly annihilating enemies in a preemptive way outside the territory", KCNA said -- implying a range extending beyond the Korean peninsula.Images showed the parade ending with what appeared to be a new solid-fuel short-range ballistic missile -- which are more mobile and more quickly deployed than liquid-fuelled versions."They'd like us to notice that they're getting more proficient
One of the more irritating aspects of the governmental response to COVID-19 hasn’t just been that fact it’s a virus nobody seems willing to cure, or that the supposed “experts” said a vaccine availability this year was impossible, or that across America bad political leaders have insisted on economy-killing shutdowns and restrictions. Those have all been irritating, of course. But what has also been irritating is the pathetic politics being played with respect to the bailout packages bandied about in Washington. The current round of those bailouts, which passed Tuesday night, should have come in October, if not July. Most of the contours of the package were agreed on then. But it didn’t come in July or October, and for a very obvious reason. Had President Trump been able to sign a bipartisan package before the election, it would have been harder to fashion Joe Biden as “president-elect.” Can’t have that, right, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer? “The facts are not irrelevant,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell after the current $900 billion package was agreed on. “I said back in July what the country needed was a package roughly of a trillion dollars focused on kids in school, small
