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 ...

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent victory in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically important state, seemed a welcome affirmation of his pro-development message. It’s now at risk of becoming a triumph for narrow-mindedness. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party didn’t name a candidate for chief minister during the Uttar Pradesh campaign, instead making the vote a referendum on the popularity ...

  The Russian hacking scandal, which has dogged Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, refuses to die down. Despite National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s fall from grace for lying about conversation with Russian envoy and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ acceptance that he had misled senators about his meetings with Kremlin envoy, Trump continues to be in denial mode about ...

  Bloomberg As China’s biggest oil and gas producer prepares to report what may be its worst-ever earnings, investors are focused on billions of dollars that could be unlocked by a spinoff of its massive pipeline network. PetroChina Co.’s natural gas and crude oil transportation system, stretching from the country’s remote borders with Central Asia to major coastal cities, could ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia maintained its spot as China’s top oil supplier in February, two months into the first OPEC output cuts in almost a decade, with shipments up 5 percent on a daily basis from January, data showed on Thursday. China imported in February 4.77 million tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, about 1.24 million barrels per day ...

  Bloomberg Algeria’s state-run energy producer plans to boost crude oil output by 14 percent in the four years to 2019 and invest billions of dollars in exploration projects. Sonatrach Group expects to invest $9 billion from 2017 to 2021 in its search for new deposits of oil and natural gas, said Farid Djettou, head of the company’s associations division, ...

  Bloomberg Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. could receive another lifeline from lenders as the world’s biggest shipbuilder needs cash to complete work on pending orders to stay afloat. Korea Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of Korea will provide 2.9 trillion won ($2.6 billion) in additional loans and swap about 1.6 trillion won of debt to equity, Korea Development ...

  Bloomberg It may be one of the smallest economies in Asia, but Vietnam is among those leading the infrastructure race. Vietnam’s public and private sector infrastructure investment averaged 5.7 percent of gross domestic product in recent years, the highest in Southeast Asia and compares with 6.8 percent in China, according to the Asian Development Bank. Indonesia and the Philippines ...