TAIPEI / AP Taiwan is planning to upgrade its F-16 fighter jets and will seek cutting-edge stealth aircraft from the United States in the face of a growing military threat from rival China, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday. The announcement follows the release of this year’s $11.4 billion defense budget, an increase of less than 1 percent from ...

  Bloomberg US stocks fell with the dollar and Treasuries as investors speculated the Federal Reserve will err in favour of more accommodation as it assesses the path for future rate hikes. Crude slipped below $49 a barrel. The S&P 500 Index failed to add to its best advance in two weeks, with health-care shares leading declines. Emerging-market equities surged ...

  Bloomberg Middle Eastern stock markets rose on Thursday, led by Egypt, after the US Federal Reserve hiked interest rates as expected but signalled no acceleration in the pace of monetary tightening. But Gulf bourses lagged emerging markets in general because of concern that low oil prices and government austerity measures will continue to weigh on corporate earnings. Among planned ...

  Reuters Saudi Arabia’s King Salman oversaw the signing of deals worth potentially $65 billion on the first day of a visit to Beijing on Thursday, as the world’s largest oil exporter looks to cement ties with the world’s second-largest economy. King Salman, who has overseen the launch of an ambitious economic reform plan since his accession two years ago, ...

  Bloomberg Prices have sunk, stockpiles ballooned and doubts about OPEC’s effectiveness grown, yet Wall Street hasn’t lost faith in oil’s recovery. Crude plunged below $50 a barrel in New York last week on signs that OPEC’s production cuts aren’t clearing a global glut quickly enough, and that US shale drillers are ready to fill in any shortfall. Nonetheless, Goldman ...

  Bloomberg California utilities are losing business to local power authorities that were created to deliver clean power to residents. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the state’s biggest utility, expects to lose about 7.3 percent of its electric load this year, and potentially 21 percent by 2020, to these so-called community choice aggregators, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The shift ...

  Bloomberg India is set to become a net exporter of steel for the first time in four years, reversing a trend that saw domestic mills battling a flood of cheap imports, according to the Indian Steel Association. Shares of producers surged in Mumbai. “This is a very positive development and it would indicate that the Indian steel industry is ...

  Bloomberg PT Aneka Tambang, one of Indonesia’s biggest nickel producers, is seeking government approval to export 6 million metric tons of low-grade ore, two months after the nation relaxed its ban on shipments. The Jakarta-based company filed an application with the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry this week to export the ore over a year, Senior Vice President Trenggono ...

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump is laying out an explicit quid pro quo for automakers: He’ll cut them a break on environmental standards and wants more hiring in return. “You need to come back and give us big numbers in terms of jobs,” Trump told the chief executive officers of General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ...

  Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. plans to upgrade its UK carmaking plant in a sign that concerns about Brexit won’t derail its investments in the country for now. The world’s second-biggest auto manufacturer will spend 240 million pounds ($294 million) to update equipment and technology at a factory in Burnaston, England to allow the production of models on its latest ...