International News

  AFP General Motors reported soaring first-quarter earnings, easily topping expectations as it broke even in Europe and scored more banner results in North America. Earnings came in at $2.0 billion, compared with $0.9 billion in the year-ago period. Revenues were up 4.5 percent to $37.3 billion. GM boasted record pre-tax profits in North America of $2.3 billion. Auto deliveries ...

  Bloomberg Regulators around the world are getting tougher on automakers after a series of cheating scandals on fuel economy and emissions, with China set to become the strictest, according to Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields. “The regulatory environment around the world is becoming more and more strict, particularly on things like greenhouse gases and fuel economy,” ...

  Bloomberg Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank, operating under a state of emergency to preserve cash, is about halfway toward reaching a forbearance agreement with creditors, according to an official. The GDB, which lent to the commonwealth and its municipalities, owes $422 mn on May 1 that officials have said the bank cannot pay. Jesus Manuel Ortiz, spokesman for Governor ...

  Bloomberg Ministers from the Group-of-Seven nations agreed to promote agricultural innovation and investment as farmers face the twin challenges of an aging workforce and extreme weather at a time when global food demand is increasing. “Motivated, skilled and enterprising farmers are essential for the growth of the agricultural sector,” the ministers said in a joint statement after two days ...

  Dhaka / AFP As they jostle for space on the floor, with the door to their fire escape padlocked, the seamstresses cannot help but recall the carnage when another of Bangladesh’s garment factories collapsed three years ago. “We always worry what will happen if a blaze breaks out or the building caves in,” one woman worker said on condition ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors plans to compensate customers in a bid to limit the fallout from a fuel-efficiency cheating scandal, the Nikkei reported on Saturday. Authorities raided the company’s office on Thursday after the company admitted it had falsified efficiency data for hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Mitsubishi Motors shares plunged more than 40 percent in ...

  Mumbai / Bloomberg Reliance Industries Ltd.’s fourth-quarter profit climbed 17 percent to the highest in more than eight years as oil’s collapse improved margins from turning crude into fuels and petrochemicals. Net income at the operator of the world’s biggest refining complex increased to $1.1bn in the three months ended March 31 from 62.4 billion rupees a year earlier, ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg Sony Corp. will postpone its forecasts for the current fiscal year while it assesses the damage from an earthquake that shut its main plant for camera sensors. The Japanese company said it won’t provide its usual financial outlook when it reports earnings on April 28 and will instead announce guidance in May. On Thursday, the company ...

  Bloomberg Conditions in the $5.3 trillion foreign-exchange market have turned supportive for one of the most popular trading strategies — the carry trade. Returns from the technique, in which investors borrow in currencies with low interest rates and use the proceeds to buy an asset with higher rates, advanced this week to the highest levels since December, according to ...

  Bloomberg Brazil shed more than 100,000 formal jobs in March as a second year of recession pummels a labour market that’s not expected to improve in 2016 regardless of how President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment process plays out. The March result of 118,776 jobs lost marked the 12th straight month of employment decline, the longest run of negative prints since ...