New Delhi / AFP Narendra Modi was elected two years ago this week promising to ease India’s notorious red tape and unpack regulatory tangles, but for foreign firms, doing business in the world’s fastest-growing large economy can still be a costly headache. With a billion consumers and rising middle class, India holds dazzling potential — yet despite signs of ...

  Beijing / Bloomberg China’s home sales continued to grow in April, signaling that tightening measures designed to stem a home-price surge in some large cities have yet to slow the market’s upward momentum. New-home sales gained 63.5 percent to 793.7 billion yuan ($122 billion) last month from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data the National ...

  Singapore / AFP Singapore Telecom (Singtel) reported a full-year net profit rise, driven by increased mobile data usage as more customers browse the Internet on handheld devices. Investments in high-speed Internet networks and services are paying off as the easy mobile connections allow people to consume more data while on the go, said Singtel, Southeast Asia’s biggest telecom firm ...