A demolition order from authorities on the southern Chinese island of Hainan has plunged embattled property giant Evergrande into a fresh publicity crisis amid an investigation into the legality of a major project’s planning permits, the Washington Post reported. Trading of China Evergrande Group shares was suspended Monday following reports from local media that the Danzhou government had ordered the removal within 10 days of 39 apartment blocks on an artificial island in the seaside city after ruling that previous approvals were not valid.

When V. Rajapandian was pushed out of his job at a heat treatment plant in India, the reason had nothing to do with performance or falling revenue. Instead, his boss offered a peculiar explanation: After Rajapandian defaulted on a loan from a mobile app, recovery agents demanded the plant pay on his behalf, Bloomberg News reported. “I lost my job because of them,” Rajapandian said of CASHe, the app he used to secure a $132 loan.

Trading in the shares of the indebted property developer China Evergrande Group were suspended on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday morning as the company raced to deliver apartments to millions of home buyers and raise cash to manage its $300 billion in debt, the New York Times reported. Evergrande said in a filing that its shares were halted pending an announcement “containing inside information,” without giving more details. The company had halted its shares once before, in October, as it tried to finalize the sale of a $2.6 billion stake in its property management unit.

Activity in South Korea's factories expanded at the fastest pace in three months in December but the economy struggled to gather momentum as rising global coronavirus cases and continued supply constraint weighed on production and overseas demand, Reuters reported. The IHS Markit purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the final month of the year rose to 51.9 from 50.9 in November, remaining above the 50 threshold that indicates expansion in activity for a 15th consecutive month.

Philippine Airlines Inc. received approval to tap $150 million in additional financing and plans to cut its debt by $2 billion, after winning approval last month from a U.S. court for its reorganization plan, Bloomberg News reported. “There are immense challenges ahead, but we look forward to tackling them as a reinvigorated Philippine Airlines, better positioned for strategic growth to continue serving our customers,” President Gilbert Santa Maria said in an emailed statement Friday.

China added $16.7 billion in foreign debt in the third quarter of 2021 due in part to increased purchases of onshore yuan-denominated bonds by foreign investors, Bloomberg News reported. About 47% of China’s outstanding debt of $2.7 trillion at the end of September are medium to long-term obligations, up three percentage points from the end of June, Wang Chunying, deputy director and spokesman of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said in a statement released on Friday.

China’s manufacturing and service sectors showed unexpected signs of recovery to close out the year, according to a pair of official gauges released Friday, as Beijing moved to arrest a downward spiral triggered by a real-estate slump and coronavirus outbreaks, the Wall Street Journal reported. China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index rose to 50.3 in December, up from November’s 50.1, the National Bureau of Statistics reported Friday. The result was better than the 50.0 median expected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

Turkey’s inflation climbed to a nearly two-decade high in December on the back of a weakening lira that is driving up the cost of food and other basic goods and destabilizing the wider economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Annual inflation rose to 36.08% last month, up from 21.3% in November, the Turkish Statistical Institute said Monday—the highest inflation rate since 2002, according to economists. The rampant inflation raises new concerns that it could overwhelm a government rescue plan unveiled last month to stabilize the battered local currency.

Australia's government said the milder impact of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 meant the country could push ahead with plans to reopen the economy even as new infections hit a record of more than 37,000 and the number of people hospitalised rose, Reuters reported. Record daily case numbers were reported on Monday in the states of Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, as well as the Australian Capital Territory.

Canada's Centerra Gold on Monday confirmed it was in talks with the Kyrgyzstan government for an out-of-court settlement over a dispute in which the state seized the company's Kumtor mine, Reuters reported. In May 2021, Centerra kicked off arbitration against the former Soviet republic after it took over the country's biggest mine for allegedly posing danger to human lives or the environment. The company also froze the government's stake when it seized the mine, meaning it does not have voting rights, nor is it entitled to dividends.