News

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s Almarai, the Gulf’s largest dairy company, reported a 1 percent increase in fourth-quarter net profit on Sunday, broadly in line with analysts’ forecasts, and said cost controls would continue to be a priority. Almarai said net profit totalled 488.5 million riyals ($130 million) in the three months to Dec. 31, up from 483.7 million riyals in ...

  Bloomberg Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s disruptive cash ban is unlikely to damage his party’s performance in upcoming state polls. In fact, it might even help. Modi’s move to invalidate 86 percent of circulated currency in Asia’s third-largest economy forced millions of Indians into lengthy bank queues. It has also dented India’s world-beating growth as the country’s cash-dependent economy ...

  Bloomberg China’s recent push to clean up its air is leaving some of its neighbours feeling threatened. The Asian country’s road to cleaner air has been gradual, with lead-free gasoline only becoming a requirement in 2000, almost three decades behind the US. This month, China imposed new curbs on the amount of sulfur in vehicle fuels to about a ...

  BOGOR / AP Japan and Indonesia affirmed a deepening of economic and political ties during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is using a four-nation tour of Asia to underscore his government’s role in countering China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. After meeting with Abe, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said the increase in Japanese ...

  Bloomberg The people who make some of Switzerland’s most expensive watches have a word of advice for the rest of the industry: Slow down. That might help avoid a repeat of the last two years, when watchmakers had to cut jobs and repurchase inventory after their rush into the Chinese market hit a wall. As more than two dozen ...

  LONDON / AP Britain is considering charging employers 1,000 pounds ($1,200) a year for every skilled worker they recruit from the European Union after the UK leaves the bloc, the country’s immigration minister said. Robert Goodwill told a House of Lords committee the charge is “something that’s been suggested to us that could apply” to EU workers. Britain has ...

  Bloomberg Just weeks after the UK voted to leave the European Union, Peter Thompson, a British healthcare consultant, sold one of his two homes in the fishing town of Tavira in Portugal’s Algarve region, capitalizing on the plunge in the pound against the euro. Thompson and his wife, who spend half the year in the British northwest county of ...

  Bloomberg Spending months to find the perfect home in your price range, only to have your mortgage application rejected, or a home inspection turn up expensive repairs, is a nightmare—one that is coming true with increasing frequency, according to a new report from real estate listings website Trulia. A Trulia analysis of US listings shows that 3.9 percent of ...

  Bloomberg Takata Corp. admitted to hiding the deadly risks of its exploding air bags for about 15 years in an agreement to pay US regulators, consumers and car manufacturers $1 billion in penalties. The faulty air bags have been linked to at least 17 deaths worldwide. The Tokyo-based manufacturer also agreed to plead guilty to one criminal charge. The ...

  Bloomberg Mexico’s fuel market liberalization has done something rarely seen before: make California’s pump prices look cheap. Drivers are flooding across the border to southern California to fill up on gasoline, after protesters blocking distribution centers near the Baja California capital of Mexicali caused stations to run dry. Antunez’s Shell gas station in Calexico is just five blocks away ...