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Bloomberg Brazil’s real strengthened, defying a slump in emerging-market currencies, as reports that President Dilma Rousseff could be directly implicated in a widening corruption scandal fueled speculation she’ll be ousted. Investors who think that a new government would be better positioned to lift the country out of its economic morass sent the real up 0.4 percent to 3.7722 per dollar ...

Bloomberg Chile’s inflation rate fell for the first time in three months in February after the economy expanded at the slowest pace in almost six years. Consumer prices rose 4.7 percent from the year earlier, the National Institute of Statistics said on Tuesday in a report on its website, compared with 4.8 percent the month before. The median estimate of ...

Bloomberg Finance ministers from Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru met investors in New York in an attempt to reassure the markets of the stability of their economies after a slump in commodity prices and economic malaise in Brazil. The four countries, which formed the Pacific Alliance in 2011 to integrate their economies, explained to investors how they’ve have been responding ...

Bloomberg Not many people in Brazil look back on the crisis-plagued years from the late 1980s to the early 1990s as a golden era. But the people of Franca do. The country’s capital for men’s footwear is among large sections of Brazil that watched their manufacturing sectors atrophy in the emerging-market frenzy and commodities boom of the 2000s. Now the ...

Beijing / Bloomberg China’s exports saw their heaviest fall in nearly seven years in February, diving more than a quarter as feeble global trade offset the weaker yuan and raised pressure on Beijing to ramp up domestic demand. The below-forecast reading is the latest data to raise fears of a “hard landing” in China and comes days after Beijing cut ...

Tokyo / DPA The number of foreign technical intern trainees who fled from workplaces last year reached the highest level ever at 5,803, greatly surpassing the previous year’s figure, according to a Justice Ministry survey. The government believes that poor working conditions have resulted in the incidents in many cases. To counter this situation, the government plans to take legislative ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has made no progress in increasing the proportion of women in management positions in the past two years. Women held 4 percent of management posts in 2015, which was unchanged from 2013, according to a comparison of a statement released Tuesday and one from 2014. The central bank, in the statements, said ...

Hanoi / Bloomberg 500 Startups is starting a $10 million fund dedicated to Vietnam as the Silicon Valley venture capital firm founded by Dave McClure backs more of the country’s technology startups. Growing Internet use by its young population, where the number of mobile phones exceeds the number of residents, provides an attractive bet in the nation that gave rise ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg Indian billionaire Ajay Piramal is a man on a shopping mission. His firms are training their sights on distressed assets discarded by indebted businesses and banks struggling with bad loans. His unlisted real estate unit, recently flush with cash from Warburg Pincus & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., is looking to buy land parcels from ...

Bloomberg Mark Carney was accused of jeopardizing the Bank of England’s credibility in the European Union debate as he faced a fiery line of questioning from U.K. ­legislators. While the BOE governor has spent months trying to avoid the political battle — a task lawmaker Andrew Tyrie compared to bomb disposal — some members of the Treasury Committee said BOE ...