Jakarta / AFP Beijing insisted on Monday a Chinese boat detained close to Indonesian islands had been fishing legally, in a fresh flare-up of tensions between the countries in the South China Sea. The Indonesian navy seized the Chinese boat in waters near the Natuna Islands on Friday for allegedly fishing illegally, the military said. The boat was towed ...

  Manila /AFP Rodrigo Duterte snubbed his proclamation as the next Philippine president on Monday, reinforcing his image as a maverick outsider intent on challenging the nation’s political establishment. A joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate in Manila endorsed the official count of this month’s election, which saw the trash-talking politician who revels in threats to ...

WASHINGTON Maybe the middle class isn’t quite so stressed any more. We in the media are rightly criticized for a pessimistic bias. We cover the unfortunate, the grim and the tragic. News is what people don’t know and, as often as not, is sad or shocking. Our prism on the world distorts reality, because reality is often predictable and reassuring ...

  Rising oil prices may give the European Central Bank (ECB) a rare opportunity to revise upwards its price growth forecasts when it meets on Thursday. Brent and WTI crude oil topped $50 per barrel on Thursday and remained above $49 on Friday. However, overall inflation remains very low and the euro area slipped back into deflation in April, with ...

  Mark Whitehouse Greece and its creditors may have averted a crisis by agreeing on the release of another dose of bailout money, but the deal does little to address a deeper problem: Europeans still don’t want to put their money there. The flow of capital between the rest of the euro area and Greece offers a useful indicator of ...

One of the major issues within New Zealand over the past few months has been the rapidly increasing cost of housing, particularly in the country’s largest city and commercial hub, Auckland. High prices combined with moderate incomes have pushed the city into becoming one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a house. The press have been ...

  Whether through signals from the Group of Seven meeting this week or in the outcome of the latest round of European negotiations on Greece, officials of advanced countries increasingly are acknowledging that the problems facing their economies require a new response to take over from the overlong use of narrow short-term tools. This recognition has been too long in ...

In formally lifting Washington’s embargo on the sale of weapons to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack Obama has affirmed that this action should not be seen as being aimed at any other state. Yet the subtext of Obama’s visit is clear: it is an implicit signaling of U.S. willingness to form a regional balance of power against the People’s Republic of ...

  Kuala Lumpur / Bloomberg AirAsia Bhd. received an offer valued at about $1 billion for its aircraft-leasing business, Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes said, prompting the shares to reach a new 14-month high in Kuala Lumpur trading. Asia’s biggest discount carrier intends to divest the fully-owned unit called Asia Aviation Capital Ltd. at some point, Fernandes said in an ...

  Beijing / Bloomberg Walt Disney Co. said it’s prepared to take action to protect its intellectual property rights after performers dressed as Snow White and Captain America were sighted at Dalian Wanda Group Co.’s new theme park and entertainment complex in China. “We vigorously protect our intellectual property and will take action to address infringement,” the company said in ...