Manila / AFP Filipino and US troops began training exercises this week, the Philippines military said on Wednesday, despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s threats to end joint war games and kick American soldiers out of his country as he edges closer to Beijing. Duterte has called for the withdrawal of American troops from his country and has branded US President ...

  France /AFP A year after extremists used weapons manufactured in Serbia to gun down victims in Paris, Balkan countries are struggling to end the scourge of illegal arms trafficking. The killers who opened fire at the Bataclan theatre, cafes and restaurants in the French capital last November used Yugoslav-era assault rifles produced by Serbia’s Zastava Arms. Months earlier the ...

  Paris / AFP French ex-economy minister Emmanuel Macron, a 38-year-old political novice, announced his bid for the presidency on Wednesday, as an alternative to the “same men and same ideas” that have guided France for decades. Macron finally ended speculation about his intentions by announcing his candidacy for his “En Marche” (“On the Move”) centrist party from a training ...

  Bloomberg The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is poised to become the latest central bank to test its own digital currency, which it will use in a trial of a blockchain-driven system for interbank payments. The ‘proof-of-concept’ project, which also involves the city’s stock exchange and eight banks, is aimed at simplifying the payments process and reducing transaction costs, ...

  Bloomberg Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd. became the first of the country’s biggest banks to report a drop in nine-month profit as it tripled loan-loss provisions and bad loans surged. The bank partially owned by Barclays Plc’s Africa unit posted profit of 6.06 billion shillings ($59.5 million) in the nine months through September, compared with 6.4 billion shillings a ...

  Bloomberg ABN Amro Group NV, the state-controlled Dutch lender that returned to the stock market last year, reported a 19 percent jump in third-quarter profit and said it would cut 1,500 jobs as it steps up cost reductions. Underlying net income, which strips out one-time items, rose to 607 million euros ($652 million) from 509 million euros a year ...

  DUBAI / Reuters The Kingdom of Bahrain is in talks with lenders for an Islamic bond, or sukuk, which is expected to be issued in the first quarter of 2017, banking sources said. No banks have been appointed yet to arrange the debt transaction, the bankers said on condition of anonymity because the information has not been made public. ...

  NEW DELHI / AP The first people showed up at the bank long before dawn, forming a line in the cold and the smog and silently waiting for the chance to withdraw their own money. They left more than seven hours later, each holding the handful of bills, worth $60 at the very most, that they’d been allowed to ...

  Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business International Petroleum Investment Company (‘IPIC’ or ‘the Group’), wholly-owned by the Government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, recorded an operating profit of US$ 1.43 billion for the first half of 2016, with its core energy investments producing a robust performance despite the lower oil price environment. IPIC, which invests across the energy value ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business As a part of its ongoing commitment to environment, health and safety (EHS), Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) as a socially responsible organization has taken additional safety measures by installing bollards in front of all facilities across its service station network in UAE to protect customers, staff and assets. In an effort to reduce the ...