Taipei / AFP The New Year has brought Taiwan no respite from its economic woes as exports fell in January for the 12th successive month, the longest continuous decline for almost seven years. The island slid into recession in the last quarter of 2015, posting its slowest annual growth since 2009, as China’s economic slowdown and weaker international demand took ...

Beijing / Bloomberg China’s military is closing the technology gap with the US, though the experience of America’s pilots still gives them an “unbelievably huge” edge, according to the Pacific Air Forces chief. General Lori Robinson, in Singapore to attend the country’s air show, said she felt assured that Chinese pilots would act professionally in interactions with the US, citing ...

Chicago / Bloomberg Most people in Chicago’s City Hall probably recall a moment of clarity, a little voice whispering, this can’t last. Maybe it came in 1979, when the city’s schools nearly went broke. Maybe it came in the late 1990s, when no one funded the teachers’ pensions. Or maybe, finally, it came this month, when the nation’s third-largest public ...

Bloomberg The New York investor Robert Mercer, whose hedge fund avoided an estimated $6 billion in taxes through trades the Internal Revenue Service is challenging, has been funding a group that’s paying for an unrelated Tea Party lawsuit against the tax agency. Mercer’s family foundation gave $500,000 in 2014 to a group called Citizens for Self Governance, according to a ...

WASHINGTON / AFP The United States and Cuba will sign a bilateral agreement authorising up to 110 scheduled daily commercial flights to Havana and nine other destinations on the communist island. The deal restores regular flights between the two countries for the first time in more than half a century. Once the accord is signed, US authorities will immediately invite ...

Rio De Janeiro/BLOOMBERG The Brazilian real became more volatile as the government tries to push Congress to pass a proposed tax increases to avoid other levies that could further weigh on economic growth. One-week implied volatility surged 0.6 percentage point to 19.24 percent, the second-highest among the world’s 16 most- traded currencies. The real slumped 0.2 percent to 4.0059 per ...

Washington / AFP Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro named a new head of his economic team just five weeks after he had handed the job to a widely criticized professor who blamed the world’s fastest inflation on the country’s “parasitic” business class. Luis Salas, who had held the post as economy vice president since Jan. 6, is leaving for family reasons, ...

Bloomberg Justice Antonin Scalia’s unexpected death not only unleashed a bitter partisan debate over the president’s powers, it has also shaken up both party’s presidential nominating contests and provided ready ammunition for volleys fired between the candidates’ camps. The ultimate beneficiaries could be Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Ted Cruz, and the battle itself could reshape the US Senate, the ...

KIEV / AFP Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to resign in the face of the government’s perceived failure to fight endemic corruption and overcome a deep economic crisis. Poroshenko’s dramatic intervention came as opinion polls showed growing public disenchantment with the pro-Western team that took over the leadership of the former Soviet nation after ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has jilted its long-standing labor union allies and is courting business leaders to help it rescue an economy teetering on the brink of a recession and a downgrade of the nation’s credit rating to junk. Union leaders were conspicuous by their absence at meetings convened since late January by President Jacob Zuma and ...