Bloomberg The Pentagon said it’s ramping up the deployment of US forces to the Middle East to “assure and enhance the defense of Saudi Arabia” against Iran at the same time President Donald Trump has vowed to start bringing troops home from the region. Combined with other recent deployments, about 3,000 personnel are being sent or having their missions extended ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc has pulled the plug on an app that shows police activity in Hong Kong, reversing course yet again as violent pro-democracy protests wrack the city. The US company said it’s now decided to remove HKmap.live from its App Store after consulting with local authorities, because it could endanger law enforcement and city residents. That marks a return ...

Bloomberg Takeda Pharmaceutical Co is nearing the sale of a portfolio of assets in the Middle East, Africa and Russia to separate buyout firms that could help the drugmaker raise about $1 billion to reduce debt, according to people familiar with the matter. The Japanese company is in advanced talks to sell over-the-counter and prescription-drug assets in Russia to Stada ...

Bloomberg India’s factory output contracted for the first time in more than two years in August, as a sharp fall in capital goods and consumer durables production weighed on activity. The index of industrial production fell 1.1% in August, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed Friday. That compares with an estimate for a 1.7% expansion. The decline, last ...

Bloomberg Singapore will spend more than S$1 billion ($728 million) on upgrading projects for public and private housing estates over the next few years, Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong said in a speech, according to the Straits Times. The projects will cushion industry partners in the current economic climate, he said at an annual gathering for the ministry, according ...

Bloomberg The tumultuous saga of former Indian billionaires Malvinder and Shivinder Singh seems to be entering a decisive stage. Scions of one of the nation’s most prominent business families, the Singh brothers were arrested and brought into a New Delhi trial court to face charges of fraudulently diverting nearly $337 million from a lender they controlled. The arrests send a ...

Bloomberg Holiday shoppers in the Philippines — which has some of Asia’s biggest malls — prefer to buy products in stores over mobile shopping, according to a study commissioned by Facebook Inc. Almost four in 10 Filipinos said in-store shopping is their first choice for the holidays, according to a study conducted by Ipsos Marketing and released by Facebook last ...

Bloomberg The cost of chartering a liquefied natural gas vessel on the short-term market has jumped the most since at least 2013. The day rate for a standard tanker East of the Suez Canal jumped 57% in the week to October 9, as issues related to US sanctions on units of China’s Cosco Shipping Corp. start to hit just as ...

Bloomberg More than a month since oil started washing up on some of Brazil’s most touristic beaches, dotting sand with black patches, killing sea turtles and scaring off fishermen, the origin of the crude is still a mystery. “We don’t know the oil’s origin, where it came from or how it got here,” Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque said at an ...

Bloomberg US antitrust enforcers have started an in-depth review of Google’s $2.6 billion planned acquisition of a data analytics company, a further sign of greater scrutiny on big technology companies, according to people familiar with the situation. The antitrust division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking more information from Google and Looker Data Sciences Inc related to ...