International News

Kuala Lumpur / Bloomberg Malaysia’s palm oil production will slump more than previously forecast as the lingering effects of El Nino curb output in the world’s second-biggest producer, according to Godrej International Ltd.’s Dorab Mistry. Production will drop by 2 million metric tons in the year through September, Mistry said in remarks prepared for a conference on Monday in Beijing. ...

Manila / DPA The Philippines’ stable macroeconomic profile would enable the country to withstand external shocks better than most of its neighbors could, debt watcher Moody’s Investors Service said. In a statement, the government’s Investor Relations Office (IRO) cited a recent Moody’s report which assessed the Philippines’ macroeconomic profile as “Moderate+,” better than the assessment of “Moderate” for China, India, ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg India’s foreign-exchange reserves climbed to a record as the rupee heads for its biggest monthly advance in two years. The currency stockpile rose by $2.54 billion in the week through March 18 to an unprecedented $355.95 billion, a Reserve Bank of India statement showed. That capped a third straight week of increases. The rupee has jumped ...

Kuala Lumpur / DPA 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) will make further announcements on debt reductions in the coming weeks. It has also fully settled a 700 million ringgit (US$173.57 million) loan based on the proceeds from the sale of Edra Global Energy Bhd. On Saturday, 1MDB president and chief executive officer Arul Kanda Kandasamy said the sale of Edra had ...

San Juan / AP Puerto Rican Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla warned late on Saturday that he would challenge in federal courts and before the “community of nations” any law that he said would nullify the U.S. territory’s Constitution by concentrating government power in a body not elected by the people. Garcia Padilla was reacting to a draft of a U.S. ...

Bloomberg The U.S. is asking Novartis AG to provide records of about 80,000 “sham” events in which the government says doctors were wined and dined so they would prescribe the company’s cardiovascular drugs to their patients. The Swiss drugmaker and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney are engaged in a whistle-blower lawsuit that alleges Novartis provided illegal kickbacks to health-care providers through ...

Sacramento / AP California legislators and labour unions have reached a tentative agreement that will take the state’s minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour, a move that would make for the largest statewide minimum in the nation by far. “This is not a done deal,” Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco, said. “Everyone’s been operating in ...

Sao Paulo / AP Unemployment in Latin America’s largest country is at its highest level since 2012, the Brazilian government said on Thursday. The country’s IBGE statistics bureau said that the jobless rate in the three months through January was 9.5 percent, compared to the 6.8 percent posted in the same period one year ago. The number of people out ...

New York / AFP Tesla is set to unveil the Model 3, its long-anticipated pitch to middle class drivers and a key component in founder Elon Musk’s vision to mainstream the electric car. Tesla Motors, until now a purveyor of luxurious all-electric cars with equally luxurious price-tags, plans to sell the Model 3 for $35,000, half the base price of ...

Brussels / AP At the aptly named Planete Chocolat, the shelves are laden with enticing Easter treasures for shoppers: bunnies with bows, pastel-wrapped eggs and elegant boxes of pralines. Swannee Vranckx, a clerk at the shop near Brussels’ main square, said she would normally have seen 50 to 100 customers by midafternoon in the days before one of the biggest ...