Bloomberg UnitedHealth Group Inc. won US antitrust approval for its $4.3 billion acquisition of DaVita Inc.’s physician practice group, letting the health conglomerate close a deal it struck 19 months ago to expand its business of taking care of patients directly. The Federal Trade Commission said that it had signed off on the tie-up after UnitedHealth agreed to sell assets ...

Bloomberg Workers at a major auto parts plant in Michigan are poised to return to work after a brief strike, alleviating the threat of a supply disruption for carmakers Ford Motor Co., Tesla Inc. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. The United Auto Workers called the strike after failing to reach a tentative contract agreement with Faurecia SA. A tentative deal ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said he called off retaliatory strikes on three Iranian sites following the downing of a US Navy drone because the action wouldn’t have been “proportionate.” “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General,” Trump tweeted. ...

Bloomberg United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on the Venezuelan government to release political prisoners. “I call on the authorities to free all those who are detained for peacefully exercising their civil and political rights,” Bachelet said via webcast before departing Venezuela after a three-day visit. The UN will leave two officials in Caracas to provide ...

Bloomberg In the coffee shops of Britain’s parliament, the political conversation has already turned to the question that will define the country’s immediate future: Can Boris Johnson be stopped from pursuing a no-deal Brexit? The options under discussion for Conservative politicians who want to avoid a no-deal split from the European Union are dramatic. They include quitting the party and ...

Bloomberg Malaysia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Saifuddin bin Abdullah has called for justice to be brought to the perpetrators of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, the ministry wrote in a tweet. The social media post was sent during a regional summit in Bangkok. Southeast Asian leaders have faced pressure to take a tougher stance on Myanmar ahead of the annual ...

Bloomberg Thousands of demonstrators who surrounded Hong Kong police headquarters dispersed peacefully after they had blocked all entrances to the building for 15 hours as part of ongoing protests over a proposed China-backed extradition bill. Protesters began converging on the police complex in the Wan Chai district after moving over from the nearby central government building, which Chief Executive Carrie ...

The US budget deficit is now almost $740 billion, the Treasury Department reported last week, prompting a new round of familiar criticism of 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act: The law’s huge tax cuts were irresponsible, as were Republicans’ sloppy and at times deliberately misleading assertions that the law would pay for itself. That criticism is understandable, but it elides ...

For the past six years, there’s been no number more filled with dread for gold bulls than $1,350 an ounce. Barring a few brief spikes, the metal has struggled to break through that level ever since it came off its run-up to $1,900 between 2011 and 2013. This matters, because an asset that has few fundamental factors driving its performance ...

Say this for Facebook Inc.: It doesn’t lack ambition. The company unveiled plans to issue a digital currency, called Libra, sometime next year. Using a blockchain-like data system, and anchored by a basket of low-risk financial assets, its ambition is to be bitcoin without the problems. Or, as Facebook modestly puts it, “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that ...