Hanoi / AFP A Vietnamese court has rejected hundreds of lawsuits filed by fishermen who demanded more compensation from a Taiwanese-owned steel plant responsible for a devastating toxic leak, a leading activist said on Saturday. In a rare case of civic action in authoritarian Vietnam, crowds of fishermen swamped a court house last month to file 506 lawsuits against …

Bloomberg China watchers are starting to put a price tag on what any collapse in the nation’s red-hot property market could cost banks. A drop of 30 percent in housing prices could cause 4 percent of total loans worth 4.1 trillion yuan ($615 billion) to sour, according to DBS Vickers Hong Kong Ltd. Commerzbank AG said such a drop could …

  Tokyo / AFP A fifth of the Japanese workforce faces the risk of death from overwork, according to a new government survey into the country’s notoriously strenuous working culture. Hundreds of deaths related to overwork — from strokes, heart attacks and suicide — are reported every year in Japan, along with a host of serious health problems, sparking lawsuits …