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Indian Oil has signed a five-year supply agreement with Mauritius's State Trading Corporation to provide the island nation's entire import requirement of petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel. The deal, inked during Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri's visit this week, marks the first long-term supply pact an Indian state-owned oil company has concluded outside South Asia in recent years. Mauritius, heavily dependent on imports and hit by West Asia supply disruptions, gains long-term price certainty and energy security; India deepens its strategic footprint in the Indian Ocean and locks in a new customer for refined products. The agreement builds on an energy partnership dating to 2001, when Indian Oil established a subsidiary in Mauritius. India's refineries produce 267 million tonnes of refined petroleum annually across 23 facilities, making it a net exporter already supplying Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Southeast Asia. The pact also covers training, capacity building for Mauritian officials, and biofuels cooperation through the Global Biofuels Alliance, which India launched during its G20 presidency. Commercial terms and volumes remain undisclosed.

Hui Ka Yan, founder of China Evergrande, was sentenced to life in prison on August 20, 2026, for large-scale financial fraud, with his companies fined a combined $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion. The 67-year-old, once Asia's richest man with a net worth of $42.5 billion in 2017, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges including embezzlement, bribery, illegally absorbing public deposits, and fundraising fraud. The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court found that between 2016 and 2021, Hui inflated Evergrande's assets and concealed liabilities through tactics including prematurely booking revenue from property sales before completion—overstating revenues by roughly $80 billion in 2019 and 2020 alone. More than 50 other executives and employees, including Hui's two sons, received sentences ranging from 22 months to 18 years. Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion) and its real estate subsidiary 7 billion yuan ($1.04 billion). The verdict closes a chapter on Evergrande's 2021 default on over $300 billion in liabilities and its 2024 liquidation order, but the underlying damage persists: the property sector's collapse has dragged home prices down more than 20 percent since 2021, eroded consumer confidence in housing purchases, and forced China's economy to confront its structural dependence on real estate, which once accounted for one-quarter to one-third of GDP. The court stated the harm to society was "extremely serious," signaling Beijing's refusal to bail out the sector despite its weight on growth.

Japan's 10-year government bond yield hit a multi-decade high on Tuesday, the highest level since the mid-1990s, as inflation pressures and expectations of faster central bank rate hikes trigger a global repricing of long-term debt. Core inflation rose to 1.8 percent year-over-year in July, matching forecasts and keeping pressure on the Bank of Japan to raise rates to 1.25 percent at its September 17–18 meeting, up from 1 percent in June. The yield surge reflects three converging forces: the Middle East conflict pushing crude oil prices higher, a weak yen forcing firms to pass through import cost increases, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's ambitious spending agenda, which assumes growth will outpace borrowing costs. If the 10-year yield sustains above 3 percent—the government's own budget assumption—debt-servicing costs will exceed the 31 trillion yen ($195 billion) currently set aside, directly undercutting her growth investment plans. The bond rout has also exposed Japan's vulnerability: demand at a recent 10-year auction was the weakest in a year, and analysts warn that higher JGB yields could lure Japanese capital away from U.S. and European debt markets, where it has been a pillar of demand for decades. The BOJ's tools—sporadic bond issuance cuts or emergency purchases—amount to temporary patches for a market being squeezed by sticky inflation that has not eased since the previous oil shock.