Bloomberg India has set a one-month deadline to begin implementing steps to resolve a dispute over natural gas that migrated from Oil & Natural Corp.’s offshore block in the Bay of Bengal to the adjoining assets of Reliance Industries Ltd. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Wednesday that a government panel has endorsed findings by an outside consultant that studied ...
Read More »Foreign investors turn sellers in Vietnam after 10-year spree
Bloomberg Foreign investors’ infatuation with Vietnam is waning. After pumping in $3.4 billion since 2006, overseas traders are set to be net sellers of assets traded on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange this year for the first time in a decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While the benchmark VN Index is near an eight-year high, MSCI ...
Read More »Evergrande shopping spree to continue
Bloomberg China Evergrande Group’s debt-fueled expansion spree shows no signs of slowing down. Even as soaring interest payments and marketing costs ate into first-half profit, a top executive at the Chinese developer said late Tuesday that the company wants to acquire brokerage and trust companies as well as smaller rivals — deals that would add to about $6 billion ...
Read More »China’s P2P industry a scam, says billionaire
Bloomberg Billionaire Guo Guangchang called China’s peer-to-peer lending industry “basically a scam,†arguing that players in the multi-billion dollar sector, troubled by collapses and frauds, lack the ability to price risk. Guo was responding to a question at a post-earnings briefing by his conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. in Hong Kong about any P2P investments by the firm. Chief Financial ...
Read More »IS spokesman, ‘architect’ of attacks, killed in Syria’s Aleppo
Beirut / AFP Top IS group strategist Abu Mohamed Al Adnani has been killed in Syria, the group said, robbing the extremists of their propaganda chief and a key architect of attacks in the West. The United States said coalition forces had targeted Adnani, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, in an air strike in Aleppo ...
Read More »Iran urges Turkey to quickly end Syria intervention
Tehran /Â AFP Key Damascus supporter Tehran urged Ankara on Wednesday to quickly wrap up its week-old military intervention in Syria, saying it was an “unacceptable” violation of Syrian sovereignty. Turkey’s cross-border offensive, which it says is aimed against US-backed Kurdish militia as well as the IS extremist group, marks the first major ground intervention by a foreign power carried ...
Read More »Kazakhstan arrests 21 suspected of plotting ‘terrorist’ attacks
Astana /Â AFP Kazakhstan said on Wednesday it had arrested 21 members of radical groups plotting terror attacks in public places, after two deadly attacks that fuelled fears of rising extremism. The security service of mainly Muslim Kazakhstan said in a statement that it had arrested 21 people from three groups after detaining them in two western regions bordering Russia. ...
Read More »Turkey denies truce with Kurdish-backed militia
Istanbul / AFP Turkey on Wednesday denied agreeing to a US-brokered truce with Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria, saying it would not compromise with a “terrorist” group a week into an unprecedented cross-border offensive. Washington said on Tuesday the two sides—both US allies—had agreed to a cessation of hostilities between their forces in Syria after deadly clashes at the ...
Read More »Kerry says united with allies over South China Sea
New Delhi / AFP The United States is united with its allies in upholding freedom of navigation rights in the South China Sea following a tribunal’s decision on the contested waters, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday. Speaking on a visit to New Delhi, Kerry called on China and the Philippines to abide by the arbitration tribunal’s ...
Read More »Migrants mass in Libya in deadly ‘race against time’
Tripoli /Â AFP Thousands of migrants are “racing against the clock” to make the perilous crossing from Libya to Europe before summer ends, with authorities in the conflict-torn country at a loss to stem the flow. Abdel Hamid Al Souei of Libya’s Red Crescent said improved weather triggered this week’s mass outflow that has seen more than 10,000 migrants rescued ...
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