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  Bloomberg U.K. factories had their best month in more than two years in September as the weaker pound sent export orders surging. IHS Markit’s monthly Purchasing Managers Index jumped to 55.4 from 53.4 in August, capping the industry’s best quarter this year. The reading, the highest since June 2014 and far above economists’ forecast for 52.1, pushes the index ...

  Frankfurt / AFP German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Sunday lashed out at Deutsche Bank’s handling of its troubles, saying “irresponsible” managers had put thousands of jobs at risk. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that the bank, which turned speculation into a business model, is now calling itself a victim of it,” Gabriel told reporters, after ...

  Lisbon / AFP Portugal’s economy will grow by just over one percent this year, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said in an interview published Monday, lowering his government’s initial estimate of 1.8 percent growth. “Everything indicates we will have growth above one percent,” he told daily newpspaper Publico, before adding that the expansion of the economy would not be “much ...

  Washington / AFP Extreme poverty has been falling steadily around the world, but eliminating it by 2030 could be stymied by unequal distribution of the gains of economic growth, the World Bank said on Sunday. Unless the gains of growth are steered better to those at the bottom of a country’s economy, they could be left behind, warned the ...

  Bloomberg Italy’s bond-yield spread to Spanish securities climbed to the highest level in almost two years after the latest poll showed that the constitutional referendum, on which Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s political fate hangs, is too close to call. Italian 10-year government bonds declined, erasing last week’s gain, after a survey conducted by Ipsos PA for the newspaper Corriere ...

  Washington / AFP The World Bank is indirectly financing a boom in some of Asia’s dirtiest coal-fired power generation despite commitments to end most funding for the sector, a development advocacy group charged on Monday. The power plants, which contribute to climate change and deforestation as well as premature deaths due to illness, are cropping up from Bangladesh to ...

  New Delhi / AFP India’s Reliance Group and France’s Dassault have signed a lucrative defence partnership as part of a fighter jet deal agreed between the two nations last month, the companies said on Monday. India signed a contract to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets for 7.9 billion euros ($8.8 billion), France’s biggest ever such sale, as the nation ...

  BLOOMBERG Coal India Ltd.’s output fell year-on-year for a second consecutive month in September, signaling demand from power plants, its biggest consumers, remains weak. Production at the world’s biggest miner of the fuel declined 5.2 percent from a year earlier to 35.24 million metric tons in September, while shipments fell 6.6 percent to 37.74 million tons, according to data ...

  HANOI / AP Vietnamese authorities say they’ve seized 309 kilograms (682 pounds) of elephant tusks illegally imported from Nigeria. A customs official says the tusks were seized at Hanoi’s airport on Saturday. She said on Monday that the cargo had been declared as glass. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the ...

  MANILA / AP The Philippine economy may grow faster than expected if public infrastructure spending is increased as planned, the World Bank (WB) said on Monday. If that happened, the country’s economic growth may exceed the earlier forecasts of 6.4 percent this year and 6.2 percent in the next two years, the bank said. It also noted some businesses ...