AP U.S. factory output dropped in March for the second straight month as manufacturers churned out fewer cars, metal parts and machinery. Yet other recent data suggests that the sector’s long-running malaise could brighten in the coming months. Factory production fell 0.3 percent last month, following a 0.1 percent drop in February, the Federal Reserve said. Those figures suggest ...

Bloomberg Two big firms, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., have two pretty divergent opinions about what you should own in the U.S. stock market right now. So far, the dollar is making the difference in who’s right. Custom indexes maintained by both banks give the advantage to Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, the JPMorgan chief U.S. equity strategist who ...

  AP A group representing Amazon indigenous people has urged Brazil’s National Development Bank to stop financing projects that cause environmental damage. After meeting with bank representatives, leaders of the Ecuador-based group known as the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin said in a statement that they also asked the bank to adopt policies that safeguard the rights ...

  Bloomberg Struggling Brazilian telephone company Oi SA is arguing that its Dutch unit is free to use borrowed funds to lend to the parent company, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. In a response to a creditor lawsuit, Oi said that individual lenders don’t have the right to question the uses of the money they lent ...

  Bloomberg Argentina seeks to end 15 years of financial isolation on Monday when it sets out to borrow cash on international credit markets for the first time since a 2001 default. The country is looking to boost its struggling economy and settle a 15-year lawsuit by US investment funds which its ex-president Cristina Kirchner branded “vultures.” This week’s debt ...

GENEVA / AP Two figures from the main Syrian opposition team to the peace talks in Geneva said that they have rejected a suggestion that was put forward by the UN special envoy to Syria in which President Bashar Assad would stay in power during a transitional period and the opposition would choose three vice presidents. The UN envoy to ...

  BEIRUT / AP A UN agency says around 10,000 civilians are trapped in “desperate” humanitarian conditions in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, where fighting has raged for days between IS militants and other extremists. The UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, says residents of the Yarmouk camp have gone without food or water for more than a week. UNRWA ...

  Kabul / AP Child casualties have soared in Afghanistan this year as the Taliban stepped up attacks in urban areas, the United Nations said on Sunday, branding the figures “appalling”. Between January and March, 161 children were killed and 449 others injured—a 29 percent increase from a year earlier—the UN’s mission in Afghanistan said in a report. Danielle Bell, the ...

  BAGHDAD / Reuters Hundreds rallied in central Baghdad in support of powerful Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al Sadr who has threatened to call mass protests if the prime minister fails to name a new cabinet to fight corruption by Tuesday. People in Tahrir Square on Sunday said many more would join them if Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi did ...

  Tehran / AFP Iran used its annual Army Day parade on Sunday to showcase parts of a long-awaited air defence system ordered from Russia, a move likely to irk critics of the arms deal. The S-300 system has been on order since 2007 but Russia postponed the sale three years later after the UN Security Council passed a resolution ...