Tokyo / DPA Otochika Ichikawa is a friendly, elderly man, who smiles and is good at making eye-contact as he speaks. The 70-year-old Japanese enjoys conversation. He knows, from bitter experience, how important social contact is. “When my daughter was 14 she refused to go to school,” Ichikawa says. His daughter spent hours leafing through the pages of all …

  Bloomberg The oil industry will shake off the effects of the biggest downturn in a generation this year as they more than double project approvals and increase exploration spending for the first time in three years, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd. Companies will green-light more than 20 oil and gas fields for development compared with nine in 2016, the …

  Bloomberg Oil advanced from the lowest level in a month as investors weighed production cuts from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members against a projected gain in U.S. crude output. Futures gained as much as 1 percent in New York after dropping 5.9 percent the previous two sessions. Saudi Arabia was said to reduce February crude sales to China …