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CARACAS / Bloomberg Venezuela boosted gasoline prices for the first time in almost two decades and devalued its currency as President Nicolas Maduro attempts to address triple-digit inflation and the economy’s deepest recession in over a decade. The primary exchange rate used for essential imports, such as food and medicine, will weaken to 10 bolivars per dollar from 6.3, Maduro ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s economy shrank less than forecast in December, capping a year when Latin America’s largest nation entered its worst recession in decades. The seasonally adjusted economic-activity index, a proxy for gross domestic product, decreased 0.52 percent in December from the previous month, after falling a revised 0.64 percent in November, the central bank said on Thursday. The median estimate ...

New York / AFP Wal-Mart Stores trimmed its sales forecast for fiscal 2017 on Thursday due to store closures and the strong dollar as it reported lower fourth-quarter earnings. The world’s biggest retailer saw shares tumble as it reported that it now expects fiscal 2017 sales to be flat, down from the previous outlook for three to four percent growth. ...

Mexico City / bloomberg For nearly 80 years, Pemex has ruled Mexico’s oil industry like a nation unto itself. Few dared challenge the state-owned monopoly, a pillar of government revenue with powerful political allies. Now, a Harvard-educated economist is about to try. Like a thunderclap, the arrival of Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya at Petroleos Mexicanos is sending shock waves across ...

Havana / AFP Eddy Relova used to scrape a living buying and selling goods in the street, but now he sits wearing a thick gold necklace at a posh restaurant in Havana. State controls over Cuba’s economy are gradually easing, unleashing a new class of moneyed consumers in a communist island where wealth is largely taboo. Now, aged 23, Relova ...

ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Thanks to UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) technology, soon UAE-based agriculturists and investors will be able to monitor their sprawling farmlands situated as far as in Sudan, without even stepping out of their homes. Under the concept of remote ownership, this could be made possible through smart drones that would do daily monitoring of faraway meadows ...

Dubai / WAM Saqr Ghobash, Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation, on Thursday launched a campaign under the slogan ‘Know your rights’ to educate workers about their rights, upon arrival through Dubai airports. “This campaign comes in the framework of the ministry’s keenness to raise awareness among foreign workers that enter the labour market for the first time especially when ...

ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Women active in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), from across the MENA region, are all set to kick-start their start-up dreams in Dubai on Friday. These exceptionally talented women will converge in Dubai to take part in two-day event all-women Smart City Hackathon 2016. Themed ‘Smart Cities for Women’, this hackathon ...

RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business Are you tired of hiring a cab, or driving your car across the city for weekend getaways? Have you been longing for a closer but comprehensive view of the Emirates capital or wanting to offer the same to your overseas guest visiting you? In short, if you want to experience Abu Dhabi in a new ...

Paris / Bloomberg Algeria has awarded UK-based Amec Foster Wheeler the front end engineering design (Feed) for three green-field refinery projects, which are estimated to have a total budget of around $6bn. A statement issued on 16 February by the state-controlled energy company Sonatrach said that the design contract for the three refineries has been “provisionally awarded to the tenderer ...