When he retired from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in 2012, Justice Kemal Bokhary predicted that a “storm of unprecedented ferocity” was gathering over the city’s judicial system and rule of law. Though dismissed as alarmist at the time, he’s turned out to be right. And all of Hong Kong’s friends — both within and abroad — should …

  Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., finds himself in some hot water. His company is being blamed (or credited, depending upon your point of view) for Donald Trump’s election because its algorithms facilitated the circulation of misleading or false news stories. This controversy is misdirected: it should be less about Facebook’s algorithms and more about …

  Red Jahncke Americans pay far more for branded prescription drugs than people in any other developed nation, exactly the kind of bad deal that President-elect Donald Trump decried repeatedly in his campaign. The U.S. was reminded of this outrage in September when it learned that drugmaker Mylan NV has been charging Americans more than $600 for its EpiPen two-pack …

  Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, announced an expanded codeshare agreement with Hong Kong Airlines, an internationally-acclaimed Skytrax 4-star airline, to give air travellers enhanced connections between Australasia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America. The two airlines have obtained regulatory approval to codeshare on nine additional routes, bringing …

  Bloomberg UK retail sales surged far more than economists expected in October as cooler weather boosted spending on winter fashions lines, sending clothing and footwear sales to the biggest increase in more than 2 1/2 years. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.9 percent from September, when they rose 0.1 percent, the Office for National …

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. is turning to merchants who sell on its marketplace for extra warehouse space, a less-costly way to expand inventory available for quick delivery. Inventory available for delivery within two business days expanded by 6 million items under the Seller Fulfilled Prime program, the company announced on Thursday. Amazon earlier this year introduced the program, which lets …

  DUBAI / Emirates Business First Avenue, the new shopping mall and hotel planned for Dubai’s Motor City, signed up leading retailer Carrefour as a key anchor tenant ahead of the project’s launch early next year. As a recent report shows that Dubai’s retail market will surpass US$52 billion in sales by 2020 and the government aims to attract 20 …

  NEW YORK / AFP President-elect Donald Trump and his team are battling back against charges of chaos and infighting as they race to set up an administration. The incoming Republican administration got an unlikely boost from outgoing Vice President Joe Biden, who said that “no administration is ready on Day One.” Trump stayed out of the public eye on Wednesday, …

  Seoul/ AFP South Korean President Park Geun-Hye will not be ready to appear before prosecutors until next week despite their demand to question her sooner over a snowballing political scandal, her lawyer said on Thursday. Park, who would be the first sitting president to be interrogated in a criminal case, has seen her approval ratings plunge in recent weeks, with …

  Kuala Lumpur/ AFP Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak warned on Thursday violence would not be tolerated at a major anti-government demonstration planned for the weekend. Leading NGO and civil-society alliance Bersih called the rally in the capital to demand the scandal-tainted prime minister’s resignation. Bersih has urged its supporters to converge on Kuala Lumpur in its signature yellow T-shirts on …