Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will consider joint naval exercises with Russia, his spokesman said on Thursday, months after he decided to reduce military drills with the US. At a briefing in the presidential palace, spokesman Ernesto Abella said Duterte saw this week’s visit by two Russian warships to Manila would enhance friendship between the navies. Duterte, who in …

  NEW ORLEANS / AFP The Coast Guard says it’s responding to a fire on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. A Coast Guard news release says the fire was reported around 2:30 a.m. Thursday on an oil platform about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana. The Coast Guard says four people aboard …

  One of the most tangible consequences of the UK’s June vote to quit the European Union was the immediate collapse in the value of the pound. The combination of a huge political upset — which saw the resignation of a national leader — and the prospect of a wounded economy drove sterling lower on the foreign exchange market in …

  The operating system war has started again. The once white-hot fights over the dominant operating software for PCs and smartphones are settled, of course. Microsoft won PCs. In smartphones, Android won on volume and Apple Inc. won on profits. Now that computing is spreading into everything from jet engines to T-shirts, the old and new tech combatants are vying …

  The duration of the latest Syrian cease-fire may matter less than its genesis. Russia, Turkey and Iran brokered the agreement without U.S. involvement — a worrying sign of the waning regional influence of the world’s only superpower. Whether this decline is temporary or permanent remains to be seen. What is abundantly clear is that, having decided not to intervene …

  Negotiations between Nicos Anastasiades, the Greek Cypriot leader, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Mustafa Akinci, in November failed to find any solution for decades-old division of Cyprus. The talks, held in Switzerland, were supposed to produce a map of the internal boundaries of a future federation on Cyprus and pave the way for broader talks. But the two-day session …

  On January 6, the Labor Department will release the final monthly employment report of what has been an historic eight-year run of jobs growth during the Barack Obama administration. This period confirmed some of our beliefs about the economy but also exposed the limitations of our understanding of a structurally changing employment situation. Here are three main takeaways from …

  Expats living in the home of UBS Group AG, drug maker Novartis AG and commodity trader Glencore Plc earn an average salary of $188,275 a year. That’s the highest in the world and almost twice the global average, according to data published by HSBC Holdings Plc. Switzerland also tops the bank’s expat career ranking for a second year. “Expats …

  A trip is often defined by its surprises, so here are my biggest revelations from six days in Lagos, Nigeria. Most of all, I found Lagos to be much safer than advertised. It is frequently described as one of the most dangerous cities on earth. Many people told me I was crazy to go there, and some Nigerian expats …

  Reuters Egypt’s stock market closed the week at a record high on Thursday as foreign funds continued to buy, while Gulf markets inched up on the back of firmer crude oil and global bourses. Cairo’s index closed 1.7 percent higher at 12,824 points in the heaviest traded volume since mid-November. “Since the float of the currency on Nov. 3 …