International News

  Bloomberg Singapore, which is vying to become a regional center for the trading of liquefied natural gas in Asia, picked Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Pavilion Gas Pte Ltd. as its next suppliers of the fuel. The companies will have exclusive rights to sell 1 million metric tons of LNG annually for up to 3 years, with imports beginning ...

  Bloomberg The number of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 owners demanding compensation for being inconvenienced by the smartphone’s troubles is starting to rise. In what may be the first Note 7 related class-action lawsuit filed in South Korea, 527 smartphone buyers are demanding Samsung Electronics Co. pay each plaintiff about 500,000 won (about $440) for time and effort lost when ...

  Bloomberg Japanese exports fell for a 12th consecutive month in September, rounding out a rough year for manufacturers struggling with a stronger yen and soft global demand. Yet the numbers were better than expected, and export volumes rose last month by the most in nearly two years, prompting some upbeat assessments by economists. “Today’s report confirmed that exports are ...

  AFP India’s Tata Sons dumped Cyrus Mistry as its chairman in a surprise announcement Monday, almost four years after his appointment as the first chief of the conglomerate from outside the Tata family. The decision comes as the steel arm of the sprawling $100 billion conglomerate struggles to offload its loss-making British assets while its carmaking business continues to ...

  Jakarta / AFP Apple is battling to gain a foothold in Indonesia after nationalistic regulations hit the US tech giant’s efforts to compete in the booming emerging market against Samsung and other rivals. The iPhone 6S and 7 are yet to be released in Southeast Asia’s top economy as Apple struggles to fulfil requirements that phone makers must have ...

  Beijing / AFP Asian lenders are spending millions of dollars developing applications using blockchain, a technology that promises to slash transaction costs, expedite cross-border payments and reduce the risk of fraud. Banks active in the region from Standard Chartered Plc to National Australia Bank Ltd. have in recent months started developing and testing systems utilizing the distributed-ledger technology in ...

  Bloomberg Sitting in the middle of almost 270 billion tons of coal reserves, the city of Taiyuan in northern China is an unlikely place to look for a leader in the battle for a greener future. This after all was China’s pollution poster child, a grimy industrial city of 4.3-million people that owed its growth to the coalfields of ...

  Bloomberg Mitsui & Co., Japan’s second-biggest trading house, agreed to purchase a 15 percent stake in New Ocean Capital, the asset manager that was founded by XL Group Ltd. and Stone Point Capital to make insurance-related bets. Mitsui also committed $100 million of investment capital to the private fund platform, Bermuda-based New Ocean said recently in a statement. XL, ...

  Madrid / AFP After basking in its best tourist summer season in 15 years, Spain now sees dark clouds on the horizon as popular destinations reach saturation point and holidaymakers are more thrifty, industry experts say. The 2016 summer season proved exceptionally good, with an influx of tourists fleeing other popular destinations recently hit by attacks, said Jose Luis ...

  Washington / AFP The European Union gave Belgium a barely 24-hour ultimatum on Sunday to say whether it can back an EU-Canada trade deal, warning otherwise it will cancel a summit to sign the accord with Ottawa. In an embarrassment for the 28-nation EU, Belgium has so far been unable to sign up to the CETA trade deal because ...