International News

Bloomberg The US is launching a new initiative to identify and invest in climate adaptation for Africa’s most nutritious crops in a bid to deal with growing hunger on the continent. The program, announced by the US State Department together with the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the African Union on Wednesday, will seek to identify crops in ...

  Bloomberg KKR & Co. has made a non-binding bid for a stake in Telecom Italia SpA’s multi-billion-euro network, the Italian carrier said on Thursday, as Chief Executive Officer Pietro Labriola seeks to turn the business around. The shares gained as much as 14% in Milan on Thursday following the announcement of the bid. Telecom Italia has struggled under a ...

  Bloomberg Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP’s $15 billion commitment last year to help finance Intel Corp.’s giant new semiconductor complex in Arizona, the first deal of its kind, sent investors and bankers racing to find similar opportunities. Brookfield, a major infrastructure investor, put up $2 billion in equity and borrowed $13 billion from a mix of foreign banks, pension funds ...

Bloomberg Swathes of office staff have been forced to work from home Wednesday as widespread industrial action closes schools and cripples Britain’s rail network. As many as 475,000 union members are on strike, demanding pay rises that do more to combat the cost-of-living crisis. Many were given salary increases of less than 5% last year, even as inflation climbed above ...

  Bloomberg The number of Swedish bankruptcies soared to the highest level in at least a decade in January, as construction companies come under pressure from an ongoing housing-market rout. The number of companies filing for bankruptcy increased by 47% from a year earlier in January, to 622, according to credit reference agency UC. The data highlights the effects of ...

Bloomberg Spain will raise its minimum wage by an inflation-busting 8% after the government and unions struck a deal, brushing aside calls from business groups to refrain from increases at a time of economic uncertainty. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who faces a battle for reelection this year, has faced fierce opposition on the issue from industry lobby groups, which had ...

  Bloomberg UK house prices fell for a fifth month in January, the longest string of declines since the financial crisis more than a decade ago, Nationwide Building Society said Wednesday. The mortgage lender said average home costs fell 0.6% this month and by a revised 0.3% in December, steeper than its previous estimate. The monthly decline was also more ...

Bloomberg Peru’s inflation is forecast to have jumped to the highest level in a quarter century as official data start to reflect the damage wrought by two months of social unrest and highway blockades. The January report, due to be published Wednesday at 10 a.m. local time by the national statistics agency, is attracting greater-than-usual interest as economists try to ...

Bloomberg Britain faces the bleakest two years of any major industrial nation with a recession in 2023 and the slowest growth of peers in 2024, the International Monetary Fund predicts. The UK will be the only Group of Seven member whose economy will shrink this year, with a contraction of 0.6%, the IMF said. That makes Britain’s outlook even worse ...

  Bloomberg Falling values are the latest headache for landlords in Europe who need to refinance their debt. It’s a problem for their lenders too. There’s a gap of €51 billion ($55 billion) between the amount owed by commercial property owners across Germany, France and the UK and the credit likely to be available for refinancing when the borrowings mature, ...