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  Bloomberg Myanmar could be the next Vietnam or Thailand, with the economy having the potential of growing as much as 10 percent, a senior British diplomat said. The Southeast Asian nation, which is opening its economy to investors after decades of military rule, has to overcome challenges including a shortage of power supply, lack of policy clarity and high ...

  Bloomberg Shum Chiu Hung, chairman of Chinese developer Times Property Holdings Ltd., has advice for those dismayed at record land bids in Hong Kong by mainland firms: “Get used to it.” Chinese developers have dominated Hong Kong’s land sales this year, splurging more than $2.9 billion to win all three residential plots tendered, including a record sum for a ...

  Bloomberg Copper is poised to drop this year as higher US interest rates and elections in Europe curb demand, according to the chairman of China’s second-largest refiner of the metal. Prices will end the year lower than where they started, Jiangxi Copper Co. Chairman Li Baomin said in an interview in Beijing as the government announced growth plans for ...

  The new push for a “multi-speed Europe,” in which only those countries that want a closer union pursue it, will almost inevitably fuel resentment in Eastern Europe, where politicians are already up in arms about being treated as second-class Europeans. A battle over food quality has become a major proxy for that resentment. The Visegrad Four — Poland, the ...

  European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is set to preside over a lot of nothing happening at policy meeting. This would be a missed opportunity. Bundesbank actions are worsening already-dangerous inefficiencies in European markets, and undermining the impact of the ECB’s bond purchases. Draghi has to demonstrate that his Governing Council is not controlled by the Germans. Financial creativity ...

  To govern India is to be constantly overwhelmed. So much needs to be done, and there’s so little to do it with. It’s hardly surprising that the Indian state is rarely ambitious. It seeks to manage, not to transform. One recent government initiative, less than a decade old, is by contrast epic in scope: the attempt to provide every ...

  ANKARA / AP The United States risks major damage to its relationship with NATO ally Turkey if the US includes Kurdish forces in the fight to retake Raqqa, the IS group’s de facto capital, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Thursday. Turkey and the US are locked in a heated dispute about US plans to liberate Raqqa, with ...

  BEIRUT / AP At least 20 civilians, including some children, were killed in suspected US-coalition airstrikes on a village east of the IS group’s de-facto capital in Syria, activists reported on Thursday. The report comes as the militants come under mounting pressure by rival US-backed and Russian-backed forces working to seize the capital, Raqqa. Also on Thursday, engineers restored two ...

  BUCHAREST / AFP Moldova has accused Russia’s intelligence service of intimidating politicians and other officials, amid an investigation in the former Soviet republic into alleged money laundering by Russian officials. Moldova’s Parliament said on Thursday that Russia intelligence agents had “abusively stopped…. interrogated, and treated in a humiliating manner” 25 Moldovan lawmakers, intelligence officials, and pro-European politicians in recent ...

  MADRID / AP Thousands of high school and university students have marched in cities across Spain to urge the government to invest more in education and to repeal a controversial education bill. The protests on Thursday were called by the State Platform in Defense of Public Education, which includes associations of parents and students, as well as teachers’ unions. In ...