Beijing / AFP Chinese police have shot dead three people who allegedly attacked a Communist Party office in the restive Xinjiang region on Wednesday, state media said, in the bloodiest such incident in months. The three “rioters” drove up to a local party office in Moyu County and “detonated (an) explosive device”, killing two and injuring three others, the official ...

  Spend much time with economists around this time of year, and you will, eventually, get around to hearing about the dreadful inefficiency of exchanging gifts. You desperately wrack your brains for something, and then buy a supply of scented bath oil for someone who has only got a shower; they return the favor by giving you three books you ...

  Plenty of M&A deals have destroyed value for the acquirer’s investors but few have done so quite as quickly, or egregiously, as Westinghouse Electric’s purchase of CB&I Stone & Webster Inc., a U.S. nuclear construction business. On Tuesday, Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba Corp. said a reassessment of the $229 million deal, announced barely a year ago, might oblige it ...

  The notion that we’re getting worse at generating big, world-changing ideas has been gaining currency. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip wrote earlier this month: Outside of personal technology, improvements in everyday life have been incremental, not revolutionary. Houses, appliances and cars look much like they did a generation ago. Airplanes fly no faster than in the 1960s. ...

  MINEVILLE, N.Y. / AP Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. is seeking to move ahead with a proposed $27 billion liquefied natural gas project in western Canada after identifying a new site for shipping the fuel, a shift that may help reduce costs and quell local opposition. Petronas’s Pacific NorthWest LNG project would continue as planned with the liquefaction plant on ...

  Bloomberg Oil traded near the highest closing level in 18 months amid conflicting signs on whether the supply surplus is diminishing in the US, the world’s largest fuel consumer. Futures slid as much as 1.1 percent in New York after climbing 6.2 percent the previous eight sessions, the longest run of gains in almost seven years. Traders faced mixed ...

  Bloomberg Shale oil companies are ready to play chicken with supply and demand again. Roiled by a year that began with crude at a 12-year low and ended with a surprise OPEC agreement boosting prices, U.S. producers including Continental Resources Inc. and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. are promising not to overreact — or overspend. The temptation will be strong: ...

  Bloomberg It may be time for a baby boom in U.S. oil. Rising crude prices and a deregulatory push in Washington may spur as many as 40 companies to hold initial public offerings over the next two years, potentially tripling 2016’s activity, according to Maynard Holt, chief executive officer at Houston-based investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. After ...

  Bloomberg China plans to spend 3.5 trillion yuan ($503 billion) to expand its railway system by 2020 as it turns to investments in infrastructure to bolster growth and improve connectivity across the country. The high-speed rail network will span more than 30,000 kilometers (18,650 miles) under the proposal, according to details released at a State Council Information Office briefing ...

  Bloomberg The South Korean government cut its growth projection for next year to 2.6% from 3%, reflecting tepid domestic consumption and weak exports. The government will maintain loose fiscal policy and pressure state-run companies to spend more in an effort to shore up sagging consumer and business sentiment, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Thursday in its report ...