International News

  New Delhi / Bloomberg Apple Inc. may be closer to opening stores in India after the government eased onerous local sourcing requirements on retailers. The world’s second-most populous country on Monday announced the easing as part of a raft of measures intended to boost foreign direct investment and expand the leeway afforded multinational corporations. It loosened policies that require …

  Kuala Lumpur / Tribune News Service Logistics operators in south Thailand have lost almost 100 million baht (US$2.8 million) over the past six to seven months as container trucks take six to eight hours to cross the border into Malaysia from Songkhla’s Sadao district, the Association of Southern Logistics and Transportation said. This was because the Malaysian checkpoint is …

  Tokyo / AP The Japanese government said on Tuesday that Mitsubishi Motors Corp. overstated mileage on its vehicles by up to 16 percent, but stopped short of slapping further penalties on the company. The Transport Ministry said the figure came from its own mileage tests to look into the cheating by the Japanese automaker on its minicar models, tiny cars …

  New Delhi / Tribune News Service Healthcare providers in India are expected to spend $1.2 billion on information technology (IT) products and services in 2016, an increase of 3.4% over 2015, according to research firm Gartner, Inc. The spending includes expenses on internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services, the research firm said. “IT services, …

  Sydney / AFP Severe coral bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef could cost it more than a million visitors a year and huge sums in lost tourism revenue, a survey said on Tuesday. The World Heritage-listed reef which teems with marine life experienced an unprecedented bleaching earlier this year that saw much of it whiten and almost a quarter …

  New York / AFP Two days before Britain’s referendum on breaking with the European Union, the largest US banks are preparing for a catastrophic scenario that could cost them billions of dollars. Amid the volatile atmosphere in Britain, the banks are outwardly keeping a straight face. “We are locked down on this,” said Michael Duvally, spokesman for Goldman Sachs, when …

  Bloomberg Brazil’s government says it struck a deal with state treasuries that’s designed to alleviate their fiscal crises without placing too much of a burden on federal coffers. The deal on the 427 billion reais ($126 billion) that states owe the federal government was reached in a meeting between Acting President Michel Temer and governors on Monday. It will …

  Bloomberg Corn from Brazil is heading to the U.S., the world’s biggest exporter, just as the South American country grapples with a shortfall of the grain. The vessel, Samsun, is estimated to arrive Aug. 12 at port in Wilmington, North Carolina, an area with many poultry and hog operations, according to a sailing schedule from the state’s port authority. …

  Bloomberg Sugar prices in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer and exporter, have surged to a record, but that’s not enough to entice processors to increase investment, Louis Dreyfus Commodities Co.’s sugar unit says. While making the sweetener has become profitable again, companies are still reluctant to boost capacity as many still struggle with a debt hangover from the previous …

  Bloomberg In two years, pipeline giant Enterprise Products Partners LP will be capable of processing 800mn cubic feet of natural gas a day in an energy-rich stretch of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico known as the Delaware Basin — 20 times what it could handle in 2012. Behind this rapid expansion in one of America’s most prolific oil …