International News

Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s first-quarter profit beat expectations and the German carmaker said it’ll meet goals on deliveries and earnings for the year, excluding special items such as legal risks. Excluding legal items of about 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), VW’s operating profit rose to 4.8 billion euros after boosting sales of lucrative sport utility vehicles and favourable exchange rates. The ...

Bloomberg A Blackstone Group LP unit that buys stakes in alternative asset managers is considering a minority investment in BC Partners, according to people familiar with the matter. Discussions between Blac-kstone Strategic Capital Hol-dings and BC are at an early stage and no deal has been reached, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is ...

Bloomberg The last stronghold in embattled businessman Anil Ambani’s phone carrier-to-power empire is also developing fault lines. Reliance Capital Ltd, his financial services business that almost doubled its profit in five years, had largely remained insulated from the distress plaguing the wider conglomerate. Now, the company that controls India’s fifth-biggest mutual fund, is racing to close a planned $2 billion ...

Bloomberg US prosecutors and representatives of fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho want to sell a $39 million mansion in Los Angeles he bought in 2012 with money allegedly stolen from the state-owned 1MDB investment fund. The empty mansion above the trendy Sunset Strip is falling into further disrepair by the day and is costing $690,000 a year in taxes, ...

Bloomberg A handful of executives at SoftBank Group Corp are weighing the idea of an initial public offering for its Vision Fund, the $100 billion behemoth that has invested in technology companies ranging from Uber Technologies Inc to WeWork Cos. The idea is early stage, said a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because it ...

Bloomberg About 10 million North Koreans — 40 percent of the population — are in urgent need of food assistance after heat and drought crippled last year’s harvest, according to the UN. The country collected about 4.9 million tonnes of food crops last year, the least in a decade, after a prolonged dry spell and limited agricultural inputs cut yields, ...

Bloomberg In the Philippines — where 76 million internet users stay online the longest in the world — just a handful of people spend a few hours each day to fight fake news about the upcoming midterm elections. The Commission on Elections has formed a team of 10 government workers to spot and report misleading online posts to Facebook, with ...

Bloomberg Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. will buy 21 Fox regional sports networks from Walt Disney Co. for $9.6 billion, a bet that the local-TV company can become a cable-sports powerhouse. Sinclair will acquire the business via a new subsidiary called Diamond Sports Group, the company said. Byron Allen, the former comedian who founded Entertainment Studios and owns the Weather Channel, ...

Bloomberg Odds that Latin America’s largest economy contracted in the first quarter increased after March industrial production fell by more than double analysts’ expectations. Brazil’s output tumbled 1.3 percent in March, its worst reading in six months, the national statistics bureau reported. In the 12 months through March, industrial production contracted for the first time since 2017. The Brazilian economy ...

Bloomberg British people need to fly less, drive electric cars, eat little meat and turn their home thermostats down to 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit) in order to rein in greenhouse gases damaging the planet. Those are the recommendations from the government’s official adviser on climate change and sketch out the toughest measures anywhere in the industrial world to rein ...