International News

  Bloomberg Like generations before him, the only light Jurdar Thingya has at night in his one-room mud hut in India’s Maharashtra state comes from a small wood fire on the floor. A broken solar panel is all that the 35-year-old farmer has to remind him of the government’s promise to bring electricity to all of India’s villages. Bhamana, population ...

  Bloomberg Anil Agarwal, an Indian mining billionaire, plans to buy as much as 2 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) of Anglo American Plc shares in the market after a merger proposal failed last year. The full stake would equate to about 13 percent of Anglo’s stock, making Agarwal the second-largest shareholder after South Africa’s Public Investment Corp. It will give ...

  AP As spring crocus blooms approach, some growers have visions of a fall-flowering crocus that produces saffron, the world’s most valuable spice. University of Vermont researchers have been raising the exotic spice now grown primarily in Iran and are encouraging growers to tap into what they hope will be a cash crop. It’s not a hard sell, particularly in ...

  Bloomberg Governments need to do more to create growth that benefits everyone, and the US should spend more on roads, highways, bridges and airports, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The body, which includes the world’s better-off countries, said in a report that governments should focus on providing better access to high-quality education and supporting employment for ...

  Bloomberg Ezra Holdings Ltd., a Singapore-listed oilfield services group, filed for bankruptcy in the US after weeks of facing hostile actions from creditors at home and abroad as it struggles to recover from a slump in oil prices over the past three years. The company filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, according ...

  Bloomberg A European Central Bank inspection of Deutsche Bank AG’s risk controls found deficiencies in derivatives and complicated financial bets that raise questions about pricing processes at the German lender, Il Sole 24 Ore reported. The review, which started a few months ago and recently ended, found that the bank’s risk management systems were not sufficiently integrated or strong ...

  Bloomberg UBS Group AG is ‘very pessimistic’ about reaching an agreement with French authorities to settle a case of alleged tax fraud that forced the bank to post a 1.1 billion-euro ($1.2 billion) bond to cover any potential penalties three years ago, Journal du Dimanche reported. France’s financial prosecutor is seeking a 1.1 billion-euro fine from UBS to settle ...

  Bloomberg Farmer Zhang Qingjun said his cooperative in China’s northeast corn belt will slash this year’s planting of the crop by at least 40 percent when sowing starts next month because swollen government stockpiles of the grain have cut profits. “We can’t accept such low corn prices — you can barely make enough to feed the whole family,” Zhang ...

  Bloomberg India’s Adani Group plans to begin extracting coal from the $16.5 billion Carmichael project in Australia in 2020 after environmental protests had delayed the first phase of the mine. The company will begin work on the project three months after it gets final approval from Australia’s federal government, Gautam Adani, billionaire chairman of the Indian group said. Adani ...

  Bloomberg The Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act revives an expensive problem for US hospitals: Who pays for the uninsured? Hospitals such as Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Community Health Systems Inc. have been on a roller-coaster since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who said during his campaign that “everybody’s got to be covered.” The latest Republican bill ...