Bloomberg After years of declines, Singapore’s home sales are on a roll, even as purchases by foreign buyers have remained muted. Stringent stamp duties levied by the government have had the intended effect of damping speculative foreign demand, with foreign buyers accounting for just 6 percent of purchases in the first half, data from Cushman & Wakefield show. That compares ...

Bloomberg Greenland Holdings Corp., China’s fourth-biggest developer by property sales, said it had overdue loans of $69.2 million in some units in the northeast province of Liaoning at the end of June, underscoring concerns about the company’s debt problems. Companies under Greenland’s unit in Liaoning had overdue short-term debt of 247.5 million yuan, as well as 210 million yuan in ...

Bloomberg ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ US President Donald Trump said that “all options” are under consideration in response to North Korea firing an unidentified ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday as Kim Jong Un’s latest provocation rattled markets. “The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: this regime has signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the ...

Bloomberg It keeps getting deeper for Houston, the epicenter of the US oil industry. As floods inundated the nation’s fourth-largest city on Monday, with more than a foot of rain likely still to come through Friday, predictions of damage ranged as high as $100 billion. Wall Street and Washington braced for the repercussions of the costliest US natural disaster since ...

BANGKOK / Reuters Thailand has no immediate plan to revoke the passports of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, after she fled the country last week ahead of a court ruling in a negligence case. Yingluck, 50, was elected Thailand’s first female prime minister in 2011 and is the sister of ousted former prime minister ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has set himself a possibly insurmountable challenge. He intends to work with arch-rival India to achieve peace across South Asia. It’s likely to be a tall order for Abbasi considering the two nuclear-armed nations haven’t had high-level dialogue for almost two years and given the institutional opposition of Pakistan’s military against reconciliation ...

Bloomberg Malaysia’s opposition alliance said it won’t cooperate with the country’s largest Islamic party at the next elections, raising the possibility of multiple-cornered fights that could benefit the ruling coalition. Pakatan Harapan is working on a strategy to avoid three-cornered contests, it said in a statement on Tuesday, without elaborating. The alliance is made up of four parties. The Islamic ...

Will President Trump’s new Afghanistan strategy alter the dynamics of America’s longest and most frustrating war? Do commanders really have any better chance of succeeding now than when this conflict began 16 years ago? I put those questions by phone to Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson Jr., who for more than 18 months has commanded US forces in Kabul. This is ...

“Two steps here, two steps there”: When storied singer Elis Regina purrs the honeyed Brazilian bolero, lovers tingle. When deft politicians take up their familiar two-step, voters know that democracy is in for a hit. So it has been in recent weeks as national lawmakers have finally begun to overhaul Brazil’s discredited political system. It’s about time. With 35 registered ...

The circumstances of the crash of the USS John S. McCain near Singapore, which killed at least one US sailor and has left nine missing, remain unclear pending a Navy investigation. The bigger picture, however, is already in focus: Four major accidents this year involving ships of the Seventh Fleet highlight a systemic problem that imperils American dominance on the ...