Bloomberg South Korea is reviewing the possibility of lifting some domestic sanctions against North Korea, according to comments made by its foreign minister at an audit hearing. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told lawmakers on Wednesday in Seoul it was consulting with other related authorities on whether to lift sanctions imposed on North Korea after the March 2010 sinking of South ...

Bloomberg Swedish opposition leader Ulf Kristersson said he would now turn to a Plan B in his center-right Alliance’s efforts to form a government after failing to secure the support of Social Democrat leader Stefan Lofven. “The Alliance now needs to agree on Plan B when it’s clear that Plan A, judging from everything we know, can be excluded,” Kristersson ...

Bloomberg A US congressional report warned of a “dire human rights situation” in China, especially the country’s mass internment of Uighurs and other Muslim ethic minorities in “political re-education camps.” The report, released on Wednesday by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said the detention may represent the biggest imprisonment of an ethnic minority population since World War II and may ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s rare rejection of a UK journalist’s visa was about far more than the fringe political ideology he was accused of promoting. The move has been viewed as the latest escalation in a methodical campaign to tame dissent in the former British colony. The push, which took shape after the Occupy Central movement locked down swaths of the ...

Bloomberg Oil traded above $74 a barrel on concerns Hurricane Michael in the US may exacerbate a supply crunch, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned higher prices may put the world economy at risk. Futures were little changed in New York after gaining 0.9 percent on Tuesday. Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other key producers need to ...

Bloomberg Egypt would need to more than double investment in clean energy to push the amount of electricity generated by renewables to over 50 percent, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). Investments would need to be $6.5 billion a year, up from $2.5 billion currently, to boost generation from clean energy to 53 percent by 2030, Abu Dhabi-based ...

Bloomberg Irving Oil Corp.’s refinery in New Brunswick, a major supplier of fuel to the northeastern US, was shut after an explosion and fire in a diesel unit. The hydrotreater, which removes sulfur from diesel to make fuel that meets environmental standards, was in the part of the refinery that was still running, while other units were shut for maintenance ...

Bloomberg China has turned half a trillion dollars of central bank money into bricks and mortar, and there’s more to come. That transformation can be best seen in Heze, a ‘small’ city of about nine million in the province of Shandong. There, local authorities have ripped down more than a quarter of a million older houses since 2015, some of ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is considering tapping Non Resident Indians (NRIs) to lure foreign exchange (forex) flows and prop up a sagging rupee, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Officials from the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are discussing a plan to raise money from NRIs, the people said asking not to ...

Bloomberg The $220 billion rout in shares of Tencent Holdings Ltd. has entered uncharted territory. Not only has the Chinese Internet giant lost more market value than any other company worldwide this year, its 38% drop from a closing high in January is now the deepest since Tencent’s 2004 listing in Hong Kong. The stock has been mired in a ...