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  Bloomberg The Philippines’ new government plans to court Chinese investment to fund an ambitious infrastructure programme, the latest sign of warming ties between the two nations that have been at loggerheads over territorial claims in the South China Sea. “The last administration hardly spoke to them,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said in an interview in the World Bank’s headquarters …

  Hanoi / AFP A Vietnamese court has rejected hundreds of lawsuits filed by fishermen who demanded more compensation from a Taiwanese-owned steel plant responsible for a devastating toxic leak, a leading activist said on Saturday. In a rare case of civic action in authoritarian Vietnam, crowds of fishermen swamped a court house last month to file 506 lawsuits against …

Bloomberg China watchers are starting to put a price tag on what any collapse in the nation’s red-hot property market could cost banks. A drop of 30 percent in housing prices could cause 4 percent of total loans worth 4.1 trillion yuan ($615 billion) to sour, according to DBS Vickers Hong Kong Ltd. Commerzbank AG said such a drop could …

  Tokyo / AFP A fifth of the Japanese workforce faces the risk of death from overwork, according to a new government survey into the country’s notoriously strenuous working culture. Hundreds of deaths related to overwork — from strokes, heart attacks and suicide — are reported every year in Japan, along with a host of serious health problems, sparking lawsuits …

Londres / AFP British business leaders on Saturday urged the government to rule out a hard break with the European Union, saying the uncertainty over the terms of Brexit was impacting investment decisions. “What we would like is the ruling out of the really worst options,” Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of CBI, Britain’s biggest business lobby group, told BBC …

  Bloomberg An experimental Novartis AG treatment for a form of advanced breast cancer slashed the risks of death and the disease progressing in a study, paving way for the Swiss drugmaker to seek regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe by the end of the year. Novartis expects to win the first approval for the drug, ribociclib, by the …

  Bloomberg Brazil’s state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA is preparing to announce a domestic fuel policy that will avert costly subsidies that drained profits during Brazil’s previous government, Chief Executive Officer Pedro Parente said in an interview. Petrobras, which hasn’t adjusted gasoline and diesel prices for more than a year, will set prices at or above parity with international …

Bloomberg Energy developers in Argentina won contracts to sell 1,109 megawatts of renewable electricity in a government-organized auction, after the nation implemented reforms aimed at promoting wider use of clean power. Wind-power companies including Envision and Pampa Energia agreed to provide 708 megawatts of capacity, Renewable Energy Undersecretary Sebastian Kind said at an event Friday in Buenos Aires. Solar developers …

  Washington / AFP US officials formally accused the Russian government of trying to “interfere” with the American presidential election, and vowed to respond at an undisclosed time and place. The assertion against Russia comes with relations already frayed over NATO defenses and stalled efforts to end the bloody civil war in Syria. A joint statement from the Department of …

  Rabat / AFP The Islamist party which has headed Morocco’s coalition government since Arab Spring-inspired protests five years ago has beaten liberal rivals in parliamentary elections, results showed on Saturday. Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) took 125 seats out of 395, the interior ministry said after all ballots were counted. Its main rival, the …