Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos has made a career of being first in e-commerce. But in one critical area, he’s falling behind — thanks to Washington. While Bezos has been eager to deliver orders to customers in the US with drones, Amazon’s efforts have so far been stymied by outdated regulations. Meanwhile, JD.com Inc., an Amazon-like Chinese retailer, is soaring ...

  Can Marine Le Pen still win the French election if her opponents don’t vote in the run-off vote on May 7? After many potential Hillary Clinton voters, certain of her victory, failed to turn out last year, Donald Trump won the US presidential election, so, by analogy, such an outcome seems somewhat possible. Yet there are strong reasons why ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Higher petrochemical share prices helped lift the Saudi Arabian bourse index on Sunday after strong first-quarter earnings in the sector, but other regional market indexes sagged in thin trade. The Saudi index rose 1.0 percent as Saudi Kayan Petrochemical hit its 10 percent daily price limit after the company reported a net profit of 265.5 million ...

  Bloomberg Bond traders demonstrated this week that for all the doubts about the Trump trade, wagers on quicker inflation still have life. Look no further than the US 10-year breakeven rate. It climbed the most on a weekly basis this year, rising back toward 2 percent, suggesting the market is starting to hop back on the inflation bandwagon. The ...

  Bloomberg US natural gas producers are running hard to stand still. The number of rigs drilling for gas has almost doubled since August, but output continues to fall. Even accounting for a lag between the start of drilling and first production, the drop in output is striking — a well in the Marcellus Shale, America’s most prolific reservoir of ...

  Bloomberg The White House has a new darling in the energy sector: liquefied natural gas. First Gary Cohn — President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser — voiced support for a terminal in the US Northwest that would send tankers full of LNG to Asia. Then, Energy Secretary Rick Perry praised an export terminal proposed by Exxon Mobil Corp. and ...

  Bloomberg Exxon Mobil Corp. has boosted it’s dividend every April for at least a decade, delivering more than $98 billion directly to shareholders. This year, the payout will likely rise again. The open question is by how much. Exxon slowed quarterly dividend growth the last two years as the industry fought through the worst price rout in a generation. ...

  Bloomberg The world’s two biggest shipbuilders reported profit and issued an improved outlook, indicating South Korea’s shipyards may finally be emerging from two years of restructuring. Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., which averted a payment crisis this month after bondholders agreed to a debt revamp, said it is set to deliver more than 30 liquefied natural gas carriers ...

  Bloomberg China’s official factory and services gauges pulled back from multi-year highs, dimming the outlook for the sustainability of the past two quarters’ acceleration in economic growth. Manufacturing purchasing managers index fell to 51.2 in April from an almost five-year high of 51.8 in March, missing the median estimate of 51.7 in a Bloomberg survey and falling short of ...

  Bloomberg Want Want China Holdings Ltd., one of China’s largest processed-foods companies, is expanding into the lucrative niche market for soy and other plant-based milk products as Chinese families spend more for healthy options. The Hong Kong-listed company plans to introduce its line of soy and oat milk this year as it forecasts the market for plant-based milk will ...