Bloomberg House Republicans announced a plan to pass a two-week extension of federal government funding without Democratic votes and avoid a shutdown on December 8. The legislation would push the next deadline to the Friday before Christmas, giving House and Senate lawmakers time to knit together their respective tax-cutting bills into a single piece of legislation to present to President …

Bloomberg Barnaby Joyce will return to parliament as Australia’s deputy prime minister after winning a special election, five weeks after he was forced to step down for being a dual national in breach of the constitution. Joyce, 50, claimed victory in the rural seat of New England, winning 63 percent of the vote to 11 percent for his nearest rival …

The most commonly cited reasons for the surge of interest in passive investing products are fee savings and skepticism about the ability of active funds to outperform. Most likely, these two factors explain a dominant part of the record flow into an ever-widening range of these investments, including mutual funds and ETFs. But they may not be the only reasons. …