Bloomberg Everyone wants a share of the world’s hottest oil market, including China’s taxman. Purchases by the country’s independent refiners, granted permission last year to buy foreign crude, have soaked up some of the global oil glut and helped revive prices after the biggest collapse in a generation. Sellers from Saudi Arabia to BP Plc have been supplying the ...

  Bloomberg Metallurgical coal contracts are set for the longest run of gains since quarterly deals were introduced in 2010 as China cuts output and raises steel production. Spot prices for hard coking coal have gained more than 80 percent since the start of June to more than $150 a metric ton, surging above the third-quarter contract price of $92.50. ...

  Bloomberg Genetically- modified mustard may be a step closer to becoming the first food crop in India to be approved for commercial production after a panel of scientists said it poses no risk to humans. The oilseed “does not raise any public health or safety concerns on human beings and animals with respect to overall nutritional characteristics,” the panel ...

  Bloomberg China National Chemical Corp. has secured commitments from lenders on a $12.7 billion loan for its purchase of Swiss pesticides producer Syngenta AG, people familiar with the matter said. The Beijing-based company, known as ChemChina, attracted 17 banks for the financing, according to the people, who aren’t authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. The ...

  Bloomberg India’s top iron ore miner is feeling the squeeze despite a global rally in the price of the steel-making material. NMDC Ltd. has cut prices about 6 percent in 2016 even as iron ore climbed 36 percent internationally. Challenges include record domestic supplies, moderating local steel demand and transport costs on India’s clogged railway. “Transport costs are prohibitive,” ...

  Vientiane / AFP President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday to dramatically increase US efforts to clear millions of bombs secretly dropped on tiny Laos by American planes a generation ago, saying the clean-up was a “moral obligation”. Laos became the world’s most-bombed country per capita from 1964 to 1973 as Washington launched a secret CIA-led war to cut supplies flowing ...

  Seoul / AFP Flooding following heavy rain has killed 60 people and left over 44,000 homeless in North Korea, the United Nations said on Tuesday, after the country reported that a northeastern river suffered its worst-ever flood. Pyongyang said on Friday the Tumen river, which partially marks the border with China and Russia, experienced the biggest flood ever recorded due ...

  Vientiane / AFP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to personally tear apart and eat Abu Sayyaf militants, in a bloodthirsty vow of revenge for deadly attacks. “They will pay. When the time comes, I will eat you in front of people,” Duterte told an audience of Filipinos late on Monday night while in Laos for a regional summit. “If ...

  Narathiwat / AFP A four-year-old girl and her father were among three killed on Tuesday when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle’s fuel tank exploded outside a school in Thailand’s insurgency-plagued south. The device went off as pupils and teachers filed into the school in the Tak Bai district of Narathiwat province for the start of the day. Two of ...

  Sittwe / AFP Hundreds of Buddhists jeered former UN chief Kofi Annan as he arrived in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state on Tuesday to examine a bitter religious conflict that has displaced tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya. Annan has been tasked by the de facto leader of Myanmar’s new government, Aung San Suu Kyi, to head a commission charged with ...