Havana, Cuba / AFP Starwood Hotels took over management of a luxury hotel in central Havana, becoming the first big American hospitality chain with a presence on the island since the Cuban Revolution a half-century ago. The newly-rechristened Cuba Four Points by Sheraton on Havana’s Quinta Avenida — a hotel owned by the Cuban military — now will be managed …

  Bloomberg Brazil’s new central bank chief Ilan Goldfajn suggested it’s too early to think about cutting rates as inflation remains above target and the government has yet to implement budget cuts. Short-dated swap rates rose. Consumer prices will increase 4.7 percent next year, still above the target set by the government, the central bank said in its quarterly inflation …

  Bloomberg The widening rich-poor divide in America has robbed the economy of a year’s worth of consumption, according to the International Monetary Fund. Middle-class households declined as a share of the population between 1970 and 2014, while the proportion in high- and low-income brackets expanded, according to new research by IMF economists Ali Alichi, Kory Kantenga and Juan Sole. …