News

  Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet met a key opposition demand on proposed legislation that would clear the way for a national sales tax, putting India closer to passing its most ambitious economic reform since the 1990s. The cabinet decided to eliminate an additional 1 percent charge on inter-state sales that was included in a constitutional amendment bill to ...

  Bloomberg Pakistan is seeking to build two new oil refineries in a bid to eliminate refined fuel imports within seven years and meet surging demand at home. The refineries, with a planned combined capacity of 24 million tons a year, are going to be built in the provinces of southwestern Balochistan and central Punjab, according to Petroleum Minister Shahid ...

  Bloomberg The euro-area is shaking off the divorce. Economic confidence in the 19-nation region unexpectedly rose this month, indicating the immediate impact of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union may be muted. The same may not be true in the U.K. itself, where the European Commission’s sentiment index plunged to a three-year low and two separate reports showed ...

  Madrid / AFP Spain’s heavily indebted telecoms giant Telefonica Thursday reported a plunge in profits on adverse exchange rates but maintained its objectives for the year. It posted net profits of 693 million euros ($770 million) in the second quarter, down 54.5 percent, below the figure of 743 million predicted analysts polled by Factset. The group was hit by ...

  Bloomberg Royal Bank of Canada ousted Toronto-Dominion Bank from the top spot in a J.D. Power consumer banking satisfaction ranking for the first time, ending a decade-long winning streak for the country’s second-largest lender by assets. Royal Bank captured the highest grade among Canada’s five biggest banks with 765 points on a 1,000-point scale, according to a study released ...

  WAM The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of eight new research and development projects to receive a total of $11.5 million in federal funding under DOE’s Subsurface Technology and Engineering Research, Development, and Demonstration Crosscut initiative. The new projects are focused on furthering geothermal energy and carbon storage technologies, and will be funded by the ...

  Paris / AFP The board of energy giant EDF is voting on Thursday on a hugely controversial project to build a nuclear power station in Britain which critics say could bankrupt the French utility. EDF’s directors are deeply divided over the planned construction of two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point for £18 billion (21.4 billion euros, $23.8 billion), with ...

  Frankfurt / AFP Scandal-struck car manufacturer Volkswagen said Thursday that its profits fell in the second quarter by 57 percent to 1.15 billion euros ($1.3 billion). Second-quarter profits were weighed down by almost 2.5 billion euros of special items, mostly related to 2015’s diesel emissions cheating scandal. “Further enormous feats of strength will be needed to contain the high ...

  London / AFP Royal Dutch Shell’s net profit collapsed in the second quarter on low oil prices, weak refining margins and production outages, the British energy giant said Thursday. Net profits sank 71 percent to $1.175 billion in the three months to June, compared with $3.986 billion in the same part of 2015, Shell announced in a results statement. ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM Under the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, the Crown Prince’s Court has launched an education initiative to be included in school curricula and courses in the form of a subject entitled, “Moral Education”, in cooperation and ...