MUMBAI / Reuters Fairfax India Holdings said it has agreed to acquire a minority stake in privately held Indian petrochemical company Sanmar Chemicals via a roughly $300 million investment. The Sanmar investment is the latest in a string of bets Fairfax India and its sister concern Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd have made in the country within the last year. The ...

Sydney / Bloomberg Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised a prudent budget will be handed down next month in comments published by the Australian Associated Press. Turnbull was speaking less than a week after an opinion poll showed the government trailing the opposition for the first time since he deposed Tony Abbott seven months ago. This budget will not be about ...

Bandar Seri Begawan / DPA Brunei should take advantage of the region’s growing Islamic finance industry which is set to develop even further with the support of large Muslim populations in Southeast Asia. In an interview, Jeff Pirie, a senior partner from auditing firm Deloitte Singapore, said that Islamic finance is a good area where Brunei can build expertise outside ...

Taipei / DPA Taiwan is confident that it will be accepted into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade bloc, a minister-designate who will be in charge of trade talks for the incoming government said yesterday. Shih Jun-ji, who has been named as a minister without portfolio of the incoming Cabinet, said the TPP membership will not be the only task ...

Tokyo / DPA Japan will launch a project under which the public and private sectors will join hands in selling dietary supplements and seasonings at low prices to developing countries in Africa and other areas, in a bid to improve nutrition in those countries, Japanese government sources said. The project is also expected to help Japanese food manufacturers start operations ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea said on Saturday it had successfully tested an engine designed for an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that would “guarantee” an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland. It was the latest in a series of claims by Pyongyang of significant breakthroughs in both its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. Outside experts have treated a ...

PENGJIA ISLET / AP President Ma Ying-jeou on Saturday visited a small island in the East China Sea to reassert Taiwan’s sovereignty and its role in the contested region, one of the key issues of his administration that ends next month. Ma’s visit on Saturday to Pengjia, roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Taiwan proper, was his administration’s second ...

Mogadishu / AFP Two members of Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shabab extremist group were executed by firing squad on Saturday for the murder of a journalist killed by a car bomb last year, a judge said. Abdirisak Mohamed Barow et Hassan Nur Ali, who admitted being Shebab members during their trial, were shot on Saturday morning in Mogadishu, Abdulahi Hussein Mohamed, deputy ...

CAIRO / AP The Saudi-led coalition behind a year-long military campaign against Yemen’s Shiite rebels is ready to commit to a cease-fire as long as the rebels abide by a UN Security Council resolution that calls for their pullout from Yemeni cities, the alliance’s spokesman said. Brig. Gen. Ahmed Al Asiri told The Associated Press that the Yemeni rebels known ...

Tehran / AFP Iran’s defence minister poured scorn on Saturday on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s accusations that Tehran is “destabilising” the Middle East, countering that America should get out of the region. The broadside illustrated new tension between Iran and the United States, despite last year’s nuclear deal, with contrasting stances on the conflicts in Yemen and Syria ...