Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the recording’s authenticity in a report aired by a Ukrainian television channel on Sunday night. In Tehran, the head of the Iranian investigation team, Hassan Rezaeifar, yesterday acknowledged the recording was legitimate and said that it was handed over to Ukrainian officials. “A series of lights like ... yes, it is missile, is there something?” the pilot calls out to the controller. The pilot responds that he saw the light by the Payam airport, near where the Revolutionary Guard’s Tor M-1 anti-aircraft missile was launched from. Ukrainian investigators were yesterday to travel to Tehran to participate in the decoding effort, but Zelensky insisted on bringing the so-called “black boxes” back to Kiev.

By Sonia Elks / Thomson Reuters Foundation, LONDONAs Britain left the EU on Friday and starts work to rewrite its relationship with the bloc and quickly strike new global trade deals, some fear Brexit might undercut a similarly demanding key pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. London cannot allow tricky trade and foreign policy negotiations to delay climate action if the 2050 net-zero target is to be met, said Mike Thompson, director of analysis at the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which advises the government. “This is not about making a few tweaks at the edges of what we are doing,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the shift required to meet the net-zero goal. In the middle of the messy divorce, then-British prime minister Theresa May announced the 2050 net-zero target, which was passed into law. Former top government scientist David King has described Brexit as an “enormous distraction” from meeting climate goals.

The GuardianThe sparky young performers on stage thanked us for coming out that night. The play was, after all, in Santiago, where only three months ago people took to the streets and did exactly that. Sprayed everywhere was the figure 6 percent — Chilean President Sebastian Pinera’s popularity rating. Sometimes comic, sometimes earnest, always indignant, Chilean theater repeatedly gives voice to the abused, the angry and the dispossessed. Funny, slippery and energetically acted, the three-hander satirized artistic vanity even as it recognized the value of political engagement.

“We anticipate that they will happen in the next handful of days and we’ll return those American citizens,” he said. Under the new rules, US citizens who have traveled in China within the past 14 days would be rerouted to one of eight designated airports, where they would undergo enhanced health screening procedures. They eight are: John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York; Chicago O’Hare International Airport; San Francisco International Airport; Seattle-Tacoma International Airport; Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu; Los Angeles International Airport in California; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; and Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia. Starting yesterday, Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Detroit Metropolitan Airport were to be added to the list. US citizens who have been in Hubei Province within 14 days of their return are to be subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine.

AP, BEIJINGThe first patients arrived yesterday at a 1,000-bed hospital built in 10 days as part of China’s efforts to fight a new virus. As SARS, spread in 2003, a facility in Beijing for patients with that viral disease was constructed in a week. China’s People’s Liberation Army sent 1,400 doctors, nurses and other personnel to staff the Wuhan hospital, Xinhua news agency said. The Huoshenshan Hospital was built by a 7,000-member crew of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other specialists, Xinhua said. Doctors can talk with outside experts over a video system that links them to Beijing’s PLA General Hospital, the Yangtze Daily said.

Instead of a job, Saira was held captive and raped repeatedly by the man and several of his friends. The School for Justice (SFJ) program was founded in April 2017 in Kolkata and is run by the Free a Girl India non-governmental organization (NGO), which fights the sexual exploitation of children, in partnership with local NGO Sanlaap and a law school. Seven women are enrolled on a law course in Kolkata and 11 more have begun courses in Mumbai since January last year. “The girls are also given a stipend and all the resources they need to take on the challenges of an intensive, multi-year, law program,” Philips said. Studying family law in school has made me aware of so many things including my own rights, and the rights of women and children.

BloombergJapanese department store operators saw duty-free sales slump during the key Lunar New Year holiday, one of the first indications of how hard the nation’s retail sector will be hit by the novel coronavirus outbreak in China. Takashimaya Co duty-free sales during the seven days of the holiday plunged almost 15 percent compared with the holiday period last year. Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings cited concerns over the virus as a reason its duty-free sales slumped 10 percent during the period. Retailers are already dealing with headwinds of a sales tax increase last year, as well as an unseasonably warm winter. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday said that the government would keep in close touch with all relevant groups to ensure a virus outbreak does not affect the Tokyo Olympic Games.

By Crystal Hsu / Staff reporterThe manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to 51.8 last month from 50.8 the previous month, as firms reported further order and output growth amid improving demand, a survey released by IHS Markit showed yesterday. The rate of improvement, albeit modest, was the best since August 2018 as the operating conditions facing local manufacturers brightened. “Latest PMI data showed Taiwan’s manufacturing sectors saw continued improvement in growth momentum at the start of this year amid a US-China rapprochement,” IHS Markit economist Annabel Fiddes said in a statement. In general, Taiwanese manufacturers expressed a stronger degree of optimism on the 12-month business outlook, IHS Markit said. However, the continued decline in output prices remained a concern, IHS Markit said, adding that companies are cutting selling prices despite growing operational expenses, which is unfavorable for the profit margins.

By Lisa Wang / Staff reporterMemorychip supply should remain steady, as major chipmakers have not halted production at fabs in China due to a coronavirus outbreak, dispelling concerns about potential supply disruptions, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. China’s major DRAM chipmaker, ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc (CXMT, 合肥長鑫存儲), is running factories as normal, unaffected by the outbreak, TrendForce found in its survey. CXMT has kept “capacity expansion plans on track and should not see any impact by the virus in the short term,” TrendForce said. Overall, the outbreak has not had any substantial impact on DRAM production, TrendForce said, adding that it would closely monitor whether the supply of raw materials would be affected by the lockdown. As XMC only contributes about 1 percent of the world’s NAND flash memory production, any production issue would have a limited effect on global supply, TrendForce said.

By Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporterThe nation’s airlines continued to cancel more flights from Taiwan to Chinese destinations this month due to an outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Last week, the airlines announced that they were canceling 232 flights for the first half of this month, according to the information on their Web sites. State-owned China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said that it would halt 40 flights to China until Monday next week, with the affected destinations including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Xuzhou. From Tuesday next week through Feb. 22, CAL and its subsidiary Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) would cancel about 120 round-trip flights from Taiwan to more than 10 Chinese cities, the airline said. Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航), another subsidiary of CAL, said that it is canceling 52 round-trip flights to Macau from today through Feb. 26.

By Lisa Wang / Staff reporterNew electric scooter sales last month plummeted 92.7 percent month-on-month to 2,101 units after local governments decided not to implement new subsidies. Gogoro’s market share slumped to 3.2 percent last month, from 21.27 percent the previous month, the data showed. “Sales of electric scooters registered explosive growth at the end of 2019 prior to the expiration of the governments’ subsidy programs,” Kwang Yang said in a statement. “As electric scooter sales are heavily reliant on government subsidies, sales in January were hit by local governments’ unclear stance over subsidies,” Kwang Yang chief executive officer Ko Chun-ping (柯俊斌) said. Total scooter sales in 2003 rose 6.71 percent year-on-year to 668,000 units, from 626,000 units in 2002, Kwang Yang data showed.

By Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporterThe TAIEX yesterday shed 140.18 points, or 1.22 percent, to close at 11,354.92 points, as investors’ concerns over the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus continued to affect market sentiment. Shares in Hong Kong gained 0.17 percent yesterday, while equities in Japan dipped 1.01 percent and those in South Korea were flat. “The TAIEX’s loss today was much lighter than its tumble of 696 points on Thursday last week,” Chu said. “At least, not all sub-indices retreated.”Turnover on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) was NT$180.168 billion (US$5.94 billion), up from NT$175.277 billion in the previous session. Chu said that the government might have activated the National Stabilization Fund to stabilize the local market, given that some investors stepped in later yesterday to limit the losses.

Reuters, HONG KONGThe Hong Kong economy’s first recession in a decade deepened in the fourth quarter of last year, weighed down by often violent anti-government protests and the US-China trade dispute, advanced estimates showed yesterday. The economy shrank by a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent in October to December from the previous quarter, versus a revised 3.0 percent in July to September. On an annual basis, the economy contracted 2.9 percent, compared with a revised 2.8 percent in the third quarter. For the whole of last year, real GDP contracted by 1.2 percent, the first annual decline since 2009. Months of unrest last year in Hong Kong plunged the financial and trading hub into its worst crisis since it reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

The brand, which debuted in 1989, grew 10 percent to 765,330 vehicles worldwide, Toyota said in a statement yesterday, powered by strong sales of its UX subcompact crossover and best-selling RX sports utility vehicle. China sales soared 25 percent to 202,000 vehicles last year and deliveries in Europe climbed 14 percent to 87,000 vehicles. Toyota has long sought to make Lexus a global brand, and its rapid growth in China and Europe after years of sluggishness is helping realize that goal. Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz saw sales last year rise 1.3 percent to 2.34 million vehicles, besting No. 2 BMW AG’s 2 percent gain to 2.17 million vehicles.

The council uses a five-tier system to depict the state of the nation’s economy, with “green” indicating steady growth, “red” suggesting overheating and “blue” signaling a recession. The pickup in December reflected stable growth in industrial output and manufacturing sales, as well as healthy wholesale, retail and restaurant operations, the council said. The index of leading indicators, which aims to predict the economic scene six months from now, rose 0.07 percent to 102.15, it said. The epidemic’s effect on Taiwan’s economy is likely to be short-lived, Taiwan Institute of Economic Research president Chang Chien-yi (張建一) said yesterday. The institute last month raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth to 2.67 percent, 0.22 percentage points higher than the estimate it made in November last year.