LIGAO / AFP A powerful typhoon left at least four people dead and eight missing as it crossed the Philippine archipelago on Monday, spoiling the Christmas holidays with strong winds, heavy rains and destructive flooding. Nock-Ten made landfall on the eastern island province of Catanduanes with gusts of 235 kilometres (146 miles) an hour on Christmas Day, ravaging the Bicol ...

  Belgrade / AFP Illegal deportations of migrants seeking to reach western Europe along the so-called Balkans route have been on the rise, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) warned on Monday. Some 1,000 people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa “were expelled in November alone along the Balkans route… more than before”, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Serbia, Mirjana Milenkovska, said. ...

  Bloomberg Loan bankers in Asia are relying on companies’ merger and acquisition activities and China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative to fuel loan growth next year after volumes in the region stagnated in 2016. Asia-Pacific ex-Japan loan volume amounts to $451.5 billion year to date, just shy of the $452.3 billion syndicated and clubbed deals completed in 2015, due ...