Bloomberg Businessweek-Asia Edition April 11, 2022

● Worldwide, coronavirus cases have passed 495 million, almost 6.2m have died, and about 11.5 billion vaccine doses have been given. In Shanghai daily cases topped 13,000 on April 5, as mass testing uncovered extensive spread of the very infectious omicron variant. ● The Biden administration extended a pause on student loan repayments through Aug. 31. This is the second extension of the pause, which first went into effect in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. Some Democrats are still frustrated that Biden hasn’t fulfilled his campaign promise to forgive at least $10,000 in student debt per borrower. ▷ 22 ● War in Ukraine ▶ Ukraine says Russian troops committed war crimes in the towns they just retreated from near Kyiv. Photos showed dead civilians lying in the streets, some with hands bound…

Focused on war in Europe, the administration of President Joe Biden has paid comparatively little attention to U.S. relations with Africa. Yet deeper engagement with the planet’s most youthful and fastest-growing continent is essential to global stability. Biden can both meet Africa’s needs and advance U.S. security interests by focusing on the biggest threat to Africa’s future: climate change. Biden took office pledging to make Africa a bigger foreign policy priority. He addressed the African Union shortly after his inauguration and dispatched Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a five-day trip to sub-Saharan Africa last November. The administration’s actions, however, have fallen short of its rhetoric. The continent accounts for little more than 1% of U.S. bilateral trade and a sliver of its overall foreign direct investment. U.S. efforts lag China’s,…

▶ Boeing announces first-quarter deliveries on April 12 for its commercial and defense operations, providing a sense of demand as the travel industry emerges from the pandemic. ▶ On April 13, JPMorgan Chase kicks off a busy week of first-quarter earnings for U.S. banks, followed a day later by Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. ▶ Apple says corporate staff must return to the office starting on April 11, working there three days a week by May 23. The move is unpopular; its employees are now used to telecommuting. ▷ 14 ▶ The EU Foreign Affairs Council meets on April 11. With outrage over Russia’s war in Ukraine growing, the group will consider ways to intensify the sanctions against Vladimir Putin. ▶ The joint spring meetings of the World Bank and the…

Two years ago, on the day Christian Smalls led a walkout demanding better Covid-19 safety protections at his Amazon.com Inc. warehouse in New York City, the company fired him, saying he himself violated safety rules. There were some copycat protests scattered around the country shortly afterward, and the company’s public relations took a hit, but Amazon’s grip on its labor relations appeared very much intact. For longtime labor advocates, Smalls’s firing seemed like one more example of a targeted dismissal that achieves its goal of scaring other workers away from organizing, even if it gets reversed. When Smalls announced that he was going to try to create a new union and that he was trying to organize the thousands of employees at his old workplace on Staten Island, that, too, seemed…

Nha Trang, a beach-blessed resort town on Vietnam’s east coast, is often dubbed by travel blogs as “Little Russia”—a tribute to high-spending Russians who used to splurge on vodka and borscht while staying in premium properties overlooking the warm sea. A few weeks ago, staff at the picturesque MerPerle Hon Tam Resort were in full swing, preparing to welcome more Russians in March after receiving virtually no foreign travelers for the past two years because of pandemic restrictions. “Then the war came,” says Tran Bao Doan, the resort’s general manager. It was a huge blow. MerPerle Hon Tam, which also offers mud bathing and parasailing, had spent almost 1 billion dong ($44,000) upgrading facilities, buying more mud, planting trees, and expanding its restaurant menu. But as the war in Ukraine disrupted flights…

Less than two months ago, S7 Airlines was heralded as a Russian success story. Operating a modern fleet of Airbus SE and Boeing Co. planes, the carrier connected the country to western Europe, Central Asia, and even Thailand. A member of the Oneworld global aviation alliance that also includes British Airways and American Airlines, S7 boasted a solid safety record, paid its bills on time, and had a charismatic leader in Vladislav Filev—an amateur pilot who created the nation’s largest private carrier—to represent its growth ambitions. But following Russia’s attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, Filev and the airline he built are left stuck between international sanctions that have prompted leasing firms to reclaim their aircraft and a Russian government determined to keep its aviation industry aloft. The airline, which once…