International News

  Bloomberg Indonesia’s second-quarter growth beat expectations as President Joko Widodo’s government embarked on a spending spree to boost an economy grappling with a slowdown in China and low commodity prices. Gross domestic product increased 5.18 percent from a year earlier, compared with a revised 4.91 percent in the first three months, the statistics bureau said in Jakarta on Friday. ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s biggest steelmaker is top of the pile no more, as a resurgent yen hands a competitive advantage to overseas rivals amid an unprecedented global glut. Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. has been overtaken as the world’s most valuable producer by Europe’s ArcelorMittal and is neck and neck with a revitalized Posco in South Korea for second ...

  Bloomberg Duke Energy Corp. has invited Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and French utility Engie SA to submit binding bids for its Latin American power assets, people with knowledge of the matter said. State-owned electricity generator China Three Gorges Corp. was also chosen to proceed to the next round, according to the people, who asked not to be identified ...

  New York / AFP Bitcoin, a Florida judge says, is not real money. Ironically, that could provide a boost to use of the crypto-currency which has remained in the shadows of the financial system. The July 22 ruling by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Pooler means that no specific license is needed to buy and sell bitcoins. The judge dismissed ...

Washington / AFP The US trade deficit grew more than expected in June as imports jumped and the gap with China continued to widen, government data released showed. The country’s trade deficit with the rest of the world climbed 8.7 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted $44.5 billion. Analysts had only expected a 3.9 percent increase. The figures mark ...

Washington / Bloomberg Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said second-quarter profit rose 25 percent as results improved at insurance units. Net income climbed to $5 billion from $4.01 billion a year earlier, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said in a statement. Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,803 a share, missing the average $2,911 estimate of three analysts surveyed ...

  La Paz / Bloomberg Ready or not, here comes Rio de Janeiro. The Olympic games opened on Friday with last-minute funding and an interim head of state, underscoring the economic and political turmoil gripping host country Brazil. Ceremony organizers had to make do with a budget that’s a fraction of the amount spent by 2012 Olympics host London. It ...

  NEW DELHI / AFP Indian business leaders on Thursday hailed the passage of a landmark tax reform bill that paves the way for a new national sales tax and the creation of a common market across the country for the first time. Lawmakers voted late on Wednesday in favour of introducing the long-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST), which ...

  Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. reported Thursday a 14.5 percent drop in profit for the fiscal first quarter as sales fell and a strong yen slashed earnings for the Japanese automaker. Two powerful quakes in southwestern Kumamoto in April that had disrupted production also hurt results. Toyota’s April-June profit totaled 552.4 billion yen ($5.4 billion), down from 646.3 billion yen ...

  Bloomberg India’s biggest electricity producer plans to fuel a proposed power project on the country’s southern coast with domestic coal, switching from its original plan to use overseas supplies equivalent to almost 9 percent of this year’s forecast imports. The state-owned company NTPC Ltd. made the decision after the federal power ministry and the state government of Andhra Pradesh, ...