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  After its plan to offer free internet in India was rejected, Facebook Inc. may soon find that the fastest way to consumers’ hearts is through their wallets. Digitally. Its WhatsApp service is preparing to start digital payments in the country, a move that would leverage India’s rush to online transactions after November’s sudden demonetisation, the Financial Times reported. WhatsApp ...

  Another day, another cloud of pepper spray and tear gas in the streets of Caracas. The autocratic government of President Nicolas Maduro has hardly changed its spots. It may have seemed otherwise, after the Venezuelan Supreme Court was forced last month to reverse its unconstitutional takeover of the country’s legislature. But Maduro has continued to suppress peaceful protests of ...

  Once again, Assad gassed his own people. At least 74 civilians died, including a dozen children, in one of the worst chemical weapons attack in an opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria. The mind-numbing images of people gasping for breath and convulsing in the streets show that Assad regime atrocities against Syrians have crossed all limits. The ...

  People in the West, certainly Americans, have long had a fascination with the East, with many predicting an inevitable “Asian century” marked by economic and market dominance. I have long disagreed with the consensus on China and other Asian Tigers, and others are beginning to agree. Many problems stand in the way of the “Asian century.” Japan dazzled Westerners ...

  China is within striking distance of locking down its biggest-ever overseas acquisition, after China National Chemical Corp. won US and European Union antitrust approval for its $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticide maker Syngenta AG. Just as well, because it may be the last big deal in a while. Although the transaction still needs the green light from regulators ...

  Like repentant smokers, Europe’s politicians have promised to quit bailing out banks. They’re finding the habit hard to break. The Italian government wants to rescue three banks which are struggling under the weight of non-performing loans. The trade-offs, as always, are complicated: financial stability now against financial stability later; shielding taxpayers from the costs of a rescue against protecting ...

  Bloomberg With two weeks to go before a referendum that could remodel Turkey’s political landscape, the Central Bank of Turkey (TCMB) pushed interest rates to the upper reaches of its monetary framework and depleted its policy tool of choice: flexibility. The bank’s average interest rate was 11.47 percent, near the mathematical limit of its current funding mix. That leaves ...

  Bloomberg As India’s monetary policy committee begins its two-day meeting, the inflation-targeting central bank may be using flawed price measures as the basis for its swing to neutral policy. All 50 economists in a Bloomberg survey predict the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will leave the repurchase rate unchanged at 6.25% on Thursday, as price pressures appear to be ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, which slashed bonuses for a second straight year, saw several senior employees leave after paying out deferred compensation for previous years. At least three executives — Kevin Burke, Neil Hosie and Patrick Kelly — departed from the lender’s trading unit in Asia, and one executive, Holger Knittel, took a new job in the bank’s home ...

  Bloomberg The Philippines central bank sees no urgency to adjust its policy stance with inflation forecast to ease after peaking in the third quarter, Governor Amando Tetangco said. Consumer-price growth will reach close to 4 percent this year before slowing, Tetangco said in an interview in Cebu, south of Manila on Tuesday. With “the inflation forecast being within the ...