Apple CEO Tim Cook defended the iPhone maker’s decision last weekend to remove several virtual private network (VPN) services from the local App Store in China — a move that was slammed by multiple VPN service providers and observers online. In Tuesday’s earnings call, Cook reiterated that Apple removed the apps because they did not […]

President Donald Trump is “wrong” when he says China can resolve the ongoing North Korea nuclear crisis on its own, Chinese state media said on Wednesday morning. “Trump is wrong in his assumption that Beijing can single-handedly handle the matter. As Beijing has said, repeatedly, it does not have the kind of ‘control’ over Pyongyang […]

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund has given 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) five days to make a $600 million payment, which the troubled Malaysian state fund failed to pay on Tuesday, further complicating a dispute hanging over Southeast Asia’s third-biggest economy. The 1MDB fund said in a statement it was committed to meeting its obligations to […]

U.S. President Donald Trump is close to a decision on how to respond to what he considers China’s unfair trade practices, a senior Trump administration official said on Tuesday. Trump is considering encouraging U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to initiate an investigation of Chinese trade practices under the 1974 Trade Act’s section 301, the official […]

China’s crackdown on capital flight and high leverage has a lot more to do with politics than economics, an independent economist said Tuesday. “The issue is that the economy is politicized, especially in China in the last few years,” Andy Xie told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Regulators in the world’s second-largest economy have been cranking up […]

Markets in Asia on Wednesday will digest a barrage of data released during the European and U.S. trading session Tuesday, including U.S. personal spending and euro zone GDP. In the U.S., the core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index for June – which is watched by the Federal Reserve as an estimate of inflation — […]

Growth in U.S. oil production is slowing, but will continue to blunt OPEC’s efforts to cut supply and normalize global inventories, keeping benchmark prices capped at around $50 a barrel this quarter, according to a CNBC poll of energy strategists, traders and economists. De facto OPEC leader Saudi Arabia is leading calls to deepen production […]

Climate change has been linked to the suicides of almost 60,000 farmers over the last three decades in India, a study published Monday has revealed. For temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius, an increase of a single degree causes approximately 70 suicides, according to a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The link is understood […]

Pakistani lawmakers on Tuesday elected former petroleum minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as the country’s new prime minister, replacing ousted veteran leader Nawaz Sharif. Sharif’s ruling PML-N party used its majority in the National Assembly to install Abbasi, after the Supreme Court last week ordered Nawaz Sharif disqualified from office over failure to disclose a source […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a tough line on national sovereignty Tuesday amid multiple territorial disputes with his country’s neighbors, saying China will never permit the loss of “any piece” of its land to outsiders. Xi’s declaration came during a nearly one-hour speech in Beijing marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People’s […]