Bloomberg Western Australia will get a A$2.3 billion ($1.7 billion) road-and-rail infrastructure package in this week’s federal budget, the national government said on Sunday. A little over half of the funds will be spent on the state’s Metronet rail project, with the rest to pay for smaller road and bridge projects. About A$1.86 billion of the money will come ...

  Bloomberg On the hilly and tropical island of Hainan, local officials and companies are investing billions of dollars to transform a string of riverside villages into a medical tourism destination. Their aim? To lure wealthy Chinese patients, who might otherwise venture overseas, to this province in the South China Sea known for its beach-front resorts. To do so they ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s tightest labor market in decades shows signs of reversing a long shift toward the hiring of temporary workers. The number of full-time, permanent workers is rising for the first time since the global financial crisis, outpacing growth in temporary jobs over the past two years. “The labor shortage has become so bad that companies can’t fill openings ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong will cut the size of returns its power utilities are allowed to make to 8 percent under a 15-year plan it hopes will help wean the city off coal while keeping electricity bills down. CLP Holdings Ltd. and HK Electric Investment Ltd. signed a new so-called Scheme of Control with the government after more than a ...

  Bloomberg At a garbage dump about 80 miles west of London, Adrian Griffiths is testing an invention he’s confident will save the world’s oceans from choking in plastic waste. And earn him millions. His machine, about the size of a tennis court, churns all sorts of petroleum-based products — cling wrap, polyester clothing, carpets, electronics — back into oil. ...

  Bloomberg Telia AB sold about $500 million worth of stock in Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, making progress on a vow to focus on its home region as it reduces its holding in an investment tied up in a decade-long ownership feud. Stockholm-based Telia agreed to sell 155 million shares in Turkcell to institutional investors in an accelerated offering, the ...

  Bloomberg Competitors to BlackRock Inc. are trying to loosen the investing giant’s stranglehold on Europe’s $153 billion bond exchange-traded fund market. They’re struggling to make much headway. The company’s market share has increased in recent years to 67 percent, data from Morningstar Inc. show, even as competitors add new funds and offer low fees. Rivals are being stymied because ...

  Bloomberg It’s a Canadian stock market, but the TSX Venture Exchange wants Americans to help fuel its growth. Traditionally known as a place where Canadians can buy shares of local junior miners, the exchange is branching out to other industries including technology. That’s an obvious fit for the head of the business, Brady Fletcher, who ran a tech startup ...

    The global economy is picking up steam, but that’s deceptive. The foundations of expansion are soft, marked by weak productivity growth and inequality. The two are related. The productivity problem confronting the world’s advanced economies predates the financial crisis more than a decade ago. When we look beyond the headline statistics, patterns emerge. Advanced economies have become less ...

  Warren Buffett’s war chest is ready for his next deal — maybe even his biggest one yet. The company’s cash swelled to $86.4 billion at the end of 2016, and at this rate it means even takeovers in the $100 billion ballpark are conceivable, as my colleague Noah Buhayar wrote for Bloomberg News this week. He flagged Costco Wholesale ...