Bloomberg Confusion over a law allowing foreigners to buy condominiums in Myanmar is prolonging a slowdown in its residential property sector, highlighting the challenges of regulatory flux in the frontier market. The legislation adopted in January 2016 leaves unanswered questions such as whether it applies to existing apartments, hurting efforts to woo investors. The outlook now depends partly on ...

  Bloomberg Franklin Templeton Investments bought about 80 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) of Indian government bonds in two days this week, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The purchases, made on Tuesday and Wednesday, were largely for tenors maturing in 2021-2023, said traders who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. JPMorgan Chase ...

  Bloomberg Creditors of India’s largest paper maker Ballarpur Industries Ltd. may face costly unintended consequences from punitive US duties on some of the company’s Asian competitors. Ballarpur invested heavily in recent years to modernize its production facilities, and now may not be able to avoid defaulting on its debts, Fitch Ratings Ltd. said. The imposition by the US of ...

  Bloomberg Toshiba Corp., reeling from an impending multibillion-dollar writedown in its Westinghouse Electric unit, has been battered to the point where a possible bankruptcy of the nuclear equipment business is being cheered by investors. Shares in the electronics conglomerate rose 6.9 percent in Tokyo, the most in a month, after Toshiba said Westinghouse’s board will decide whether to file ...

  WASHINGTON / AP US Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into his work in Eastern Europe, The Associated Press has learned. Information about Manafort’s transactions was turned over earlier this year to US agents working in the Treasury ...

  KIEV / AP A former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov was shot and killed in Kiev on Thursday in what the Ukrainian president described as an “act of state terrorism” by Russia, an accusation that has been quickly rejected by the Kremlin. President Petro Poroshenko said Voronenkov’s killing “clearly shows the handwriting of Russian special services shown repeatedly in various ...

  CAIRO / AP Extremists killed 10 Egyptian soldiers in fighting in a central part of the restive Sinai Peninsula during an army raid on a militant hideout early Thursday, the military said, a toll that underscored its continuing challenges to rein in insurgents in the area. Army spokesman Tamer el-Rifai said troops killed 15 extremists and took seven prisoners ...

  KABUL / AP The Taliban captured a key district center in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province on Thursday while in the country’s north, an officer turned his rifle on sleeping colleagues, killing nine policemen, officials said. The fall of Sangin district, once considered the deadliest battlefield for British and US troops in Afghanistan, comes amid the insurgents’ year-long push to ...

  The House Intelligence Committee hearing on Monday marked the end of the opening installment of ‘The President,’ the must-watch reality/horror show that has transfixed the nation and the world. Now the plotline gets more serious, perhaps darker, with some new characters likely to emerge in key national-security roles. President Trump should be less of a stage hog going forward, ...

  Being boring has put billionaire Li Ka-shing in a higher-risk position. Li, who earned the moniker Superman for his canny investing, has spent years building an empire that’s almost like a trust. CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. and Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd., which reported full-year results Wednesday, get most of their earnings from staid but stable assets such as ...