Bloomberg Australian retailers powered further ahead in July, suggesting cashed-up households are coping well with rapid interest-rate increases. Sales advanced 1.3%, easily exceeding economists’ forecasts for a 0.3% gain, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Monday. The gain was the largest in four months. “Turnover rose in five of the six retail industries,” said Ben ...

  Bloomberg WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Meta Platforms Inc., is rolling out a shopping product in India, the first time users will be able to browse and purchase groceries and other household products without leaving the app. WhatsApp unveiled the new tool alongside JioMart, part of Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jio Platforms, an Indian tech company that Meta ...

Bloomberg Nasa delayed the debut launch of its new massive rocket due to an issue with one of its engines, dealing a temporary blow to the space agency’s plan to return to the lunar surface. With Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and a global audience watching online, the uncrewed Artemis I mission was called ...

  Bloomberg Two Air France pilots were suspended after coming to blows in the cockpit of an Airbus jetliner during a flight between Geneva and Paris, latest safety issue to plague the airline. The mid-air dispute occurred in June, according to a spokeswoman for the carrier, who confirmed a report by La Tribune newspaper. The incident was resolved quickly, and ...

Bloomberg Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of trying to create a global sense of fatigue about its invasion, including by restricing the flow of gas to drive energy prices higher. The European Union is working on “an emergency intervention and a structural reform of the electricity market” to drive down spiking power prices, according to Ursula von der Leyen, ...

  Bloomberg International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi will lead an inspection of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine this week, he said in a statement on Twitter. The visit to Europe’s biggest nuclear power station will take place amid almost-daily reports of new shelling and damage to infrastructure surrounding its six reactors. A document ...

  Bloomberg Georgia Governor Brian Kemp must testify before a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s actions after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, but not until after he faces his own election later this year, a Fulton County Superior Court judge ruled. Judge Robert McBurney on Monday rejected a claim by Kemp’s attorneys that he was immune as ...

Bloomberg Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro had their first in-person confrontation of Brazil’s election campaign during a stormy televised debate that set the tone of the contest with five weeks to go. The two front-runners didn’t waste any time before attacking each other, with Bolsonaro branding Lula’s government “the most corrupt in history” and ...

  Bloomberg China is enforcing lockdown restrictions in areas around Beijing more intensively, and will mass test the nearby port city of Tianjin, stepping up its quest to wipe out Covid-19 ahead of a key meeting of the Communist Party’s top leaders. The moves come even as China’s latest wave shows signs of easing, with 1,556 new infections nationwide reported ...

  Bloomberg Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stood by tax cuts estimated to cost the budget billions in revenue and promised his government would undertake “reform and renewal” in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Taking questions after a speech in Canberra on Monday to mark 100 days since he took the top job, Albanese defended his decision to keep ...