News

  Bloomberg Typhoon Megi lashed Taiwan with wind and rain on Tuesday, bringing 20-foot-high waves and knocking pedestrians off their feet in Taipei. More than 280,000 households lost electricity, state-owned utility Taiwan Power said on its website. About 5,000 people were evacuated, according to the island’s National Fire Agency. The capital city of Taipei shut markets, schools and offices, along ...

  Bloomberg Indian power producer Lanco Infratech Ltd. expects to start the process to sell its assets in six months to raise an estimated 70 billion rupees ($1 billion) to repay debt. “For now we are focused on completing the projects, because that will bring us value when we sell them,” T. Adi Babu, Lanco’s chief operating officer for finance, ...

  Hanoi / AFP Hundreds of fishermen in central Vietnam have filed lawsuits demanding more compensation from a Taiwanese firm accused of dumping toxic waste in the ocean that killed tonnes of fish, activists said on Tuesday. The mass fish deaths in April ravaged livelihoods in communities along the central coast, where fishing is the main source of income. In ...

  Sydney / AFP Australia watered down plans for a “backpacker tax” on foreigners on working holidays on Tuesday, after an outcry from farmers and tourism operators. Canberra had been under increasing pressure to shelve the tax — 32.5 cents for every dollar earned — amid fears it would deter tourists from choosing the country as a destination. Some 600,000 ...

  Reuters Egypt will hire SGS SA, a Geneva-based inspection service, to review wheat cargoes, a move that may ease trader concerns about the country’s frequently changing import standards. SGS will examine imported wheat at origin and arrival ports, Hamed Abdel-Dayem, a spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry, said by phone on Tuesday. Typically, the inspections have been carried out by ...

  Grangemouth / AFP A tanker carrying the first shipment of shale gas from the United States arrived on Tuesday in Britain, where there are currently no commercial fracking operations because of fierce public opposition. The ship arrived at Grangemouth, a sprawling energy complex on the River Forth near Edinburgh in Scotland, where the North Sea offshore oil and gas ...

  Bloomberg Russian wheat exports haven’t lived up to expectations so far this season as falling prices made some growers reluctant to sell grain to traders amid a halt in purchases by Egypt, the world’s largest buyer. Outbound shipments in the three months since the campaign started in July will probably amount to 9 million metric tons, down 8 percent ...

  Bloomberg Argentina is about to find itself in yet another legal dispute with disgruntled creditors. A group of European investors who own defaulted Argentine debt plan to sue the country in Germany as soon as next month after they were excluded from a settlement offer, said Jakob Heichele, a Munich-based attorney at a law firm that bears his name ...

  Bloomberg London’s housing market faces severe price declines if the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union triggers an extended period of economic weakness, according to UBS Group AG. A severe recession could halt the “unsustainable price growth fueled by ample liquidity and tight supply,” UBS said in a report accompanying its Global Real Estate Bubble Index. London is ...

  London / AFP Soft drinks giant A.G. Barr, maker of Scotland’s famous Irn-Bru fizzy drink, slammed the British government Tuesday over its proposed sugar tax against obesity, as it reported falling sales. Barr — whose brands include carbonated drink Tizer and Rubicon juices — said there had been a move towards sugar-free drinks in the face of “negative media ...