There will be significantly less parking in the downtown starting this month. As of May 1 downtown businesses — restaurants and pubs — are able to re-construct seasonal patios and sidewalk cafés, an exercise in utilizing the Kootenay outdoors for another form of recreation since the bylaw was created in 2019. As a result, 27 parking stalls will disappear and vehicular parking will be replaced with human parking under the Sidewalk Café Bylaw. “As patio expansions may include the use of an additio
Japan will likely keep intervening to prop up the yen until the risk of speculators triggering a free fall in the currency has been eliminated, said a former central bank official who was involved in Tokyo's market forays a decade ago. The yen jumped on Thursday on what traders suspect was the second day of intervention following such action on Monday to stem the currency's sharp declines. Japan's Ministry of Finance has declined to confirm whether it had stepped in, leaving markets on edge over the chance of another bout of intervention.
The Swiss government said on Thursday that Russia has not been invited "at this stage" to talks to be held in Switzerland in mid-June aimed at helping bring about peace in the conflict between Moscow and Ukraine. "Switzerland is convinced that Russia must be involved in this process," the Swiss government said in a statement. "A peace process without Russia is not possible."