BEIJING / AP China will raise its defense budget by about 7 percent this year, a government spokeswoman said Saturday, continuing a trend of lowered growth amid a slowing economy despite regional tensions over the South China Sea and other issues. Total defense spending would account for about 1.3 percent of projected gross domestic project in 2017, said Fu ...

  Bloomberg The world’s biggest pension fund posted the biggest quarterly gain in its history as Japanese stocks surged and a plunge in the yen boosted overseas investments after Donald Trump’s election victory. The Government Pension Investment Fund returned 8 percent, or 10.5 trillion yen ($92 billion), in the three months ended December 31, increasing assets to 144.8 trillion yen, ...

  Bloomberg PropertyGuru Pte, the top Southeast Asian real estate website backed by TPG Capital, expects to become profitable this year as it digests a clutch of acquisitions and rides growth in markets such as Indonesia and Vietnam. “We have hyper-growth, our revenues are growing over 30 percent,” Chief Executive Officer Hari Krishnan, 39, said in an interview in Singapore. ...

  Bloomberg A private survey signaled the first expansion in four months for India’s key service sector, adding to signs the economy is bouncing back from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock clampdown on cash late last year. The Nikkei India Services Purchasing Managers’ Index inched up to 50.3 in February, a report showed Friday, from 48.7 in January and November’s ...

  Bloomberg Nintendo Co. shares rose to their highest in a month after a smooth debut of Switch, a hybrid console that aims to bring together the worlds of mobile and home gaming. Retailers in Tokyo and Sydney began selling a limited number of units early, while fans in New York and Toronto waited in the cold to buy the ...

  Bloomberg Hutchison China MediTech Ltd., the biotechnology company backed by billionaire Li Ka-shing, reported positive late-stage results for its drug to treat colorectal cancer, taking the company one step closer to having a home-grown therapy on the market. The Hong Kong-based company, known as Chi-Med, said in a statement that it is currently preparing to submit a new drug ...

  Bloomberg China has the economic power to move markets, and it isn’t afraid to use it. South Korean stock trading offered a case in point, with a selloff in hotels, cosmetic makers and other tourism-related companies that made the country’s benchmark the worst performer among Asian equity markets. The slide followed a Yonhap news agency report on China ordering ...

  Bloomberg Mobile World Congress, the premier wireless-technology conference in Barcelona, was supposed to be a coming out party for Google’s digital assistant. But at this year’s proceedings, artificially intelligent voice-based service struggled to be heard above the din of an army of rival assistants that will jostle for attention on smartphones. As the event kicked off, the search giant ...

  Bloomberg Auto insurance may be on the brink of an incursion from mobile-phone and technology companies. Telefonica SA’s O2 unit — one of the first mobile operators in Britain to offer car insurance — expanded its product line in February to include telematics boxes, which track people’s driving habits and can lead to cheaper premiums for youngsters. That’s stoking ...

  Emirates Business A new global study which includes data from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ‘The Internet of Things: Today and Tomorrow’ published by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, reveals that IoT will soon be widespread as 85% of businesses globally plan to implement IoT by 2019, driven by a need for innovation and business efficiency. While the ...