Politics

PUERTO RICO / Bloomberg Puerto Rico’s debt exchange isn’t the only security swap for investors burned by the island’s financial collapse. Franklin Resources Inc. plans to close the $147 million Double Tax-Free Income Fund, whose strategy of plowing more of its assets into Puerto Rico than any other municipal-bond fund turned it into one of the worst performers. After the ...

Bloomberg Man Group Plc, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund firm, reported 17 percent lower profit in 2015 after performance-fee revenues and margins dropped. The shares fell the most in nearly six months. Adjusted pretax profit fell to $400 million from $481 million a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement on Wednesday. That missed the $455 ...

Bloomberg As the dot-com bubble burst, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the last firewall between the U.S. economy and a recession is consumer confidence. Given the market’s plunge this year, will it hold now? So far, so good. The risk facing the U.S. is that falling stock prices cause people to start worrying about their finances, and they spend ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump’s dominating victory in the Nevada caucuses pushes him further out ahead of his nearest competitors for the Republican presidential nomination, giving his unorthodox candidacy a major boost heading into Super Tuesday contests next week. The real estate mogul and political newcomer now has won in the Northeast, the South and the West by riding a wave of ...

Washington / AFP China has deployed fighter jets to the same contested island in the South China Sea to which it also has sent surface-to-air missiles, US officials said. Citing two unnamed US officials, Fox News said US intelligence services had spotted Chinese Shenyang J-11 and Xian JH-7 warplanes on Woody Island in the disputed Paracel Islands chain over the ...

Seoul / AFP South Korea on Wednesday dismissed China’s warning that the planned deployment of a US missile defence system could damage ties, stressing that it was to counter “growing threats” from North Korea. “The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system (THAAD) is a measure of self-defence against growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea,” presidential ...

Bloomberg US and Chinese officials cited “significant” progress on a new United Nations resolution targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, while laying out continued differences over the contested South China Sea. Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary of State John Kerry wouldn’t give details of any draft proposal, which would punish North Korea for its recent nuclear test and long-range ...

Hong Kong / AFP Russia delivered 10,000 Kalashnikovs to the Afghan government on Wednesday, with officials saying they were for the fight “against terrorism”, a day after Kabul hosted talks on reviving the peace process with the Taliban. The assault rifles, delivered with pomp at a ceremony on the tarmac at Kabul’s military airport, will be directly transferred to security ...

Vienna / AFP Austria warned on Wednesday that the EU’s future was at stake as it pressed Balkan states, in the absence of an effective common response by the bloc, to reduce the influx of migrants despite fears of a humanitarian crisis. Further undermining the European Union’s hopes to get a grip on the situation, Hungary meanwhile announced a referendum ...

Jerusalem / AFP Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency abuses Palestinians under interrogation in a manner so systematic it points to official endorsement, two Israeli NGOs said in a report published on Wednesday. The 70-page joint study by rights groups B’Tselem and Hamoked is based on accounts by 116 suspects interrogated at Shikma prison in the southern Israeli city of ...