Bloomberg Global investors are snapping up small-cap stocks in South Korea as they rotate out of big companies listed on the main Kospi index after 2017’s 20 percent rally and amid optimism about the government’s plan to stimulate the tech-savvy market next year. Foreigners bought $88 million of shares in the Kosdaq gauge, helping push up the index 3.9 percent. ...

Bloomberg Almost two dozen government troops were killed in South Sudan during fighting, just a day after a cease-fire agreement came into effect, according to the main rebel group. The nation’s army and rebels last week agreed to cease hostilities from midnight December 24, in a bid to end three years of violence that’s claimed tens of thousands of lives ...

Bloomberg Russia plans to limit the number of airbases the US can use to launch reconnaissance flights under the Open Skies Treaty, in a fresh sign of its deteriorating relationship with Washington. The restrictions will be introduced Jan. 1 in response to US measures to limit Russian military flights in its airspace, said Georgiy Borisenko, head of the Foreign Ministry’s ...

Bloomberg A secessionist push in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions is on the brink of a full-blown revolt, threatening political stability in a country ruled by one of Africa’s longest-ser-ving leaders. Following a crackdown on independence supporters who tried to raise flags on government buildings in the central African nation’s English-speaking regions in October, at least 16 members of the security forces ...

Bloomberg The leader of Japan’s main opposition party said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is treating the nation’s 70-year-old pacifist constitution as a “toy” in an effort to define his own political legacy. “He wants to change it in whatever way he can so that he can go down in history,” Yukio Edano, head of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, ...

Bloomberg China’s leading policy makers plan to discuss next month a proposal to amend the national constitution for the first time since 2004, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The decision was made on Wednesday at a Politburo meeting headed by President Xi Jinping, according to the report. It provided no details on the possible change to the constitution, which ...

President Donald Trump invoked ‘America first’ by pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord, promising to revive the coal industry and repeatedly tweeting himself as the author of the 105-month-old bull market. The nation’s top money manager of 2017 took the opposite path to becoming No. 1 and says it’s better to be lucky than smart. He embraced ...

Bitcoin has had a terrific year overall, thanks to a small but dedicated set of believers in the disruptive power of cryptocurrencies who have also enabled many other individual investors to participate in the eye-popping phenomenon. Yet after bitcoin’s value fell by more than a third in just a few days last week, and as exchanges struggle to cope with ...

Timing is everything. Hobbled by an aging population and negligible interest rates, Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. is keen for growth and sees overseas expansion, particularly in Southeast Asia and the US, as key. In its moves to acquire 73.8 percent of PT Bank Danamon Indonesia, it may just succeed where DBS Group Holdings Ltd. failed. Indonesia now is ...

The world’s central banks recently signed off on the Basel III rules for bank capital. The new system, years in the making, is a step forward: It will make banks stronger and safer. But there are several loose ends. One of the most important concerns the treatment of sovereign bonds on banks’ balance sheets. Banks that hold large, concentrated portfolios ...