AFP China’s wall of cotton is coming down. Once the world’s biggest grower of the crop, the country lost that crown to India in the season that just ended in July after depressed prices discouraged plantings. China’s sowings are set to drop again in the 12 months that started on Aug. 1, with harvested acres poised for the lowest ...

  Bloomberg British Columbia’s decision to impose a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers to cool Vancouver’s scorching housing market is poised to derail more than 400 deals worth millions of dollars and may prompt calls for legal action. At least 427 deals are likely to collapse due to the new measure, according to Dan Morrison, president of the Real ...

  Bloomberg Even in the pre-crash era, when real estate prices were surging, nine-figure deals for properties seemed outlandish. Then beginning in 2015, with ultra-luxury sales on the decline and homes in the seven and eight figures languishing on the market for twice as long as the year before, as well as undergoing price cuts, their existence seemed futile. Yet, ...

  Bloomberg Shares in Chinese property developer Glorious Property Holdings Ltd. were suspended Monday in Hong Kong pending an announcement about a privatization bid by the company’s founder and controlling shareholder. Glorious Property requested a halt in trading at 9 a.m. local time ahead of an announcement “containing inside information in relation to a possible privatization by the controlling shareholder ...

  Bloomberg In late 2014, fledgling entrepreneur Josh Tetrick persuaded investors to plow $90 million into his vegan food startup Hampton Creek Inc. Tetrick had impressed leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms by getting his eggless Just Mayo product into Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, and other top US supermarkets within about three years of starting his company. What Tetrick and his ...

  Bloomberg Online retailers like Amazon.com have made it possible to get books, high heels, laptops and groceries delivered to your doorstep after work and even on Sundays. But carriers at the US Postal Service pay a price for such convenience: they’re getting bitten by dogs. Attacks on postal employees are on the rise — in 2015 alone, they jumped ...

  Bloomberg Airbus Group SE said the U.K. Serious Fraud Office has opened a criminal investigation into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption relating to some of its third-party consultants. The Toulouse, France-based planemaker said in a statement that it’s cooperating with investigators probing its civil aviation business. Airbus had flagged to U.K. regulators and the European Export Credit Agencies ...

  NEW YORK /AP Wal-Mart, the US largest private employer, launched a new scheduling system in about 650 Neighborhood Market stores that gives hourly workers more certainty about their schedules. The system was launched in late July and could be eventually rolled out to all 4,600 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, said Mark Ibbotson, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president of central operations. There ...

  Bloomberg Nike Inc.’s decision to stop selling golf equipment and a possible bankruptcy filing by the Golfsmith retail chain are raising concerns that the declining popularity of the sport is taking a toll on the companies that thrive on it. Millennials, the key to the sport’s future, are shunning the expensive and time-consuming game in favor of more instantly ...

  Bloomberg Agrium Inc., the largest agricultural retailer to US farmers, fell after the company cut its full-year profit forecast for a second time this year amid an agriculture slump that has dragged down prices for crop nutrients. Earnings in 2016 will be $5 to $5.30 a share, the Calgary-based company said in a statement. That compared with a May ...