Bloomberg Israel is counting on Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep confrontations with Iran and Syria from spiraling into war as the Trump administration mostly watches from the sidelines, a senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “The American part of the equation is to back us up,” but the US currently “has almost no leverage on the ground,” ...

Bloomberg Conservatives’ infighting over how to engage with the rest of a united Europe has helped bring down the party’s past three prime ministers. Now, Theresa May has given her government a few weeks to forge a position—and flesh out details—they can all get behind as the UK negotiates its way out of the European Union. With interlocutors in Brussels ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she’s determined to serve another full term, rebuffing party critics who say she sold out to the Social Democrats to extend her 12 years in office. Faced with a backlash against last week’s coalition agreement and calls by some in her Christian Democratic Union to start thinking about a successor, Merkel defiantly brushed aside ...

Bloomberg Surging output of US shale oil won’t be a “huge distorter” of efforts by global crude producers to clear a glut, according to OPEC’s president. The market should re-balance this year, given robust demand and producers’ compliance with their pledges to curtail supply, United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei, currently the president of OPEC, said on Monday ...

Bloomberg Asia’s rapacious thirst for liquefied natural gas is sucking supplies from surprising places. China to Japan and South Korea are paying top dollar for the super-chilled fuel. The pull is so strong that Norway’s Statoil ASA, which usually exports most of its LNG to Europe, is shipping a rare cargo east. It plans to send more. Asia gets most ...

SEOUL / Reuters South Korea’s Korea Gas Corp has entered court-administered arbitration with Australian joint venture North West Shelf Gas seeking to settle a dispute over a liquefied natural gas (LNG) contract that expired in 2016. A spokesman for the state-run Korean firm, known as KOGAS, confirmed an arbitration process was under way but declined to give details. Woodside Petroleum, ...

Bloomberg Singapore may unveil an e-commerce tax in next week’s budget, setting the tone for a region that’s grappling with online retail’s assault on brick-and-mortar vendors. Eight of the 12 economists in a survey said the February 19 budget will contain a new tax on online vendors, with another betting that cross-border digital transactions will now be included in goods-and-services ...

Bloomberg Takata Corp.’s US operations, pushed into bankruptcy by the largest automotive recall in US history, settled with two groups representing victims of its faulty air bags, the company said in court documents. Two committees for people suing over the air bags have agreed to support a bankruptcy-exit plan that would resolve lawsuits by channeling them into a trust funded ...

Bloomberg India’s capital market regulator is examining Fortis Healthcare Ltd. and will look into Religare Enterprises Ltd., following reports alleging money was taken from the companies by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, who are part of the founding family of both companies. “We are examining the Fortis issue,” Securities & Exchange Board of India Chairman Ajay Tyagi told reporters in New ...

Bloomberg China’s government is leaning toward allowing provinces continue with local subsidies for electric vehicles to sustain the rising demand for new-energy automobiles in the country, according to people familiar with the matter. Authorities are in favor of abandoning an earlier proposal to scrap local incentives, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. In ...