Reuters Egypt’s state grains buyer GASC received only one offer on Wednesday at its first wheat purchase since reinstating a zero-tolerance policy on ergot fungus, a near complete boycott that underscores the difficulty of sourcing grains under the rule. A ban on the common grain fungus caused huge disruption to Egypt’s massive wheat imports earlier this year, with global ...

  Bloomberg Oil is poised for the biggest monthly advance since April as the global surplus diminishes and OPEC’s planned talks fan speculation it could reach an accord on output. Futures slid 1 percent in New York, trimming the monthly gain to 10 percent. Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi said Tuesday the country would support a proposal among major producers ...

  Bloomberg India is aspiring to compete with the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong for foreign entrepreneurs by offering residence in return for investment. Foreigners investing 100 million rupees ($1.5 million) over 18 months, or 250 million rupees over three years, would be eligible to live in India for 10 years, the government said in a statement in New ...

  Bloomberg India has set a one-month deadline to begin implementing steps to resolve a dispute over natural gas that migrated from Oil & Natural Corp.’s offshore block in the Bay of Bengal to the adjoining assets of Reliance Industries Ltd. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Wednesday that a government panel has endorsed findings by an outside consultant that studied ...

  Bloomberg Foreign investors’ infatuation with Vietnam is waning. After pumping in $3.4 billion since 2006, overseas traders are set to be net sellers of assets traded on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange this year for the first time in a decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While the benchmark VN Index is near an eight-year high, MSCI ...

  Bloomberg China Evergrande Group’s debt-fueled expansion spree shows no signs of slowing down. Even as soaring interest payments and marketing costs ate into first-half profit, a top executive at the Chinese developer said late Tuesday that the company wants to acquire brokerage and trust companies as well as smaller rivals — deals that would add to about $6 billion ...

  Bloomberg Billionaire Guo Guangchang called China’s peer-to-peer lending industry “basically a scam,” arguing that players in the multi-billion dollar sector, troubled by collapses and frauds, lack the ability to price risk. Guo was responding to a question at a post-earnings briefing by his conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. in Hong Kong about any P2P investments by the firm. Chief Financial ...

  Beirut / AFP Top IS group strategist Abu Mohamed Al Adnani has been killed in Syria, the group said, robbing the extremists of their propaganda chief and a key architect of attacks in the West. The United States said coalition forces had targeted Adnani, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, in an air strike in Aleppo ...

  Tehran / AFP Key Damascus supporter Tehran urged Ankara on Wednesday to quickly wrap up its week-old military intervention in Syria, saying it was an “unacceptable” violation of Syrian sovereignty. Turkey’s cross-border offensive, which it says is aimed against US-backed Kurdish militia as well as the IS extremist group, marks the first major ground intervention by a foreign power carried ...

  Astana / AFP Kazakhstan said on Wednesday it had arrested 21 members of radical groups plotting terror attacks in public places, after two deadly attacks that fuelled fears of rising extremism. The security service of mainly Muslim Kazakhstan said in a statement that it had arrested 21 people from three groups after detaining them in two western regions bordering Russia. ...