Bloomberg BlueScope Steel Ltd., Australia’s top steel producer, surged to a five-year high after the company doubled profits, helped by cost cuts and higher revenues. While prices and margins are poised to drop a bit, they’ll still be better on average than levels seen during the past 12 months, Chief Executive Officer Paul O’Malley said in an interview with …

  Bloomberg Japan is struggling to keep its farms running as farmers age and young people shun the work. This has opened the door for more foreign workers — including a growing number found to be working illegally. The number of Japanese farmers has dropped by about half since 2000, to below 2 million this year, according to the agriculture …

  Bloomberg Indian refiners that have benefited from the scrapping of fuel subsidies still have room to extend their world-beating surge on improving margins and cheap valuations, according to SBI Life Insurance Co. The rally still hasn’t caught up with fundamentals, said Gopikrishna Shenoy, chief investment officer at SBI Life, India’s second-biggest private insurer by assets under management. Indian Oil …