Bloomberg An Indian court sentenced a business class passenger to life in jail after he was found guilty of placing a hijacking note in the washroom of a flight, the first such ruling under a new law. Birju Kishor Salla, 38, was also fined 50 million rupees ($720,000), which will be distributed among pilots, crew and passengers, a special court …

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc plans to donate $8 million to two nonprofit groups working on homelessness and affordable housing in Seattle and Arlington County, Virginia. Seattle’s largest employer has long been a target of activists there who contend the company didn’t do its part to help the city moderate a surge in the cost of living amid the tech boom. Last …

Bloomberg Activist investor Jonathan Litt is threatening a proxy fight next year at Taubman Centers Inc if the US mall owner doesn’t take steps to improve its performance, including exiting Asia or divesting its top-performing properties. Litt said in a letter to shareholders that he planned to nominate directors at the 2020 meeting unless the company makes “meaningful progress.” “Their …

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump slammed the Federal Reserve for high interest rates in a tweet, complaining the euro and other currencies were “devalued” against the dollar. “The Fed interest rate way too high, added to ridiculous quantitative tightening! They don’t have a clue!” Trump said on Twitter, renewing his complaints about the US central bank a week before it …

Bloomberg The central banks have increased their holdings of equities beyond $1 trillion last year as they sought to diversify their reserves away from low-yielding bonds, according to a survey to be published. Monetary authorities boosted their allocation of equities to 10 percent of their reserves despite recent market volatility and a quarter of them said they plan to purchase …

Bloomberg Mario Draghi said joining the euro has improved the quality of institutions in eastern European members, as opposed to “more mixed” results in countries that have kept their own currencies. The ECB President, hosting a conference on central and eastern Europe in Frankfurt, said the main challenge in region is achieving more balanced gro-wth. That “will only be possible …

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank is again at the mercy of its bigger neighbours and will have to lean in a more dovish direction to keep its currency under control. With the franc having touched a two-year high against the euro, SNB President Thomas Jordan and fellow policy makers are feeling the pressure from risks such as trade tensions, a …

Bloomberg Nigeria’s central bank said it’s made no change to its naira policies, after a revision on its website led some analysts to speculate that it was ending a system of multiple exchange rates. “Nothing has changed in Nigeria’s exchange-rate structure,” and the naira’s value continues to be determined by trading in the Investors’ & Exporters’ FX Window, Isaac Okorafor, …

Bloomberg Raghuram Rajan has delivered some uncomfortable economic truths in a career spanning the International Monetary Fund and powerful positions in his native India. The question is whether Brexit Britain is ready to hear them from another foreign Bank of England governor. The job of stewarding the UK’s monetary policy and maintaining its financial stability has rarely been more political, …

LONDON / WAM UAE-linked oil services firm Petrofac has secured its third project under a 10-year framework agreement with Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) with the award of a procurement services project for the Mabrouk North East Line Pipe Procurement Project in Oman. The contract, valued at approximately $75 million, is the latest to be awarded under the agreement signed in …