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Fed faces 2015 deja vu as markets discount rate-increase chances

  Bloomberg For Janet Yellen’s Fed, 2016 is beginning to look all too familiar — another saga of disappointment and downgrade. Last year, Federal Reserve officials started off signaling two interest-rate increases but those plans didn’t work out: Weak first-quarter U.S. growth delayed action in June, international concerns took September off the table and liftoff finally happened in December. This ...

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Bird flu egg boom goes bust as US farms quick to replace flock

  Bloomberg America’s egg crisis is over. Not only have shortages disappeared, but there are signs of an emerging glut. U.S. prices have tumbled 75 percent from a record in August, after the biggest bird-flu outbreak ever forced farmers to destroy flocks. Since then, the laying-hen population has rebounded faster than expected while demand languished from home chefs to food ...

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Brevan Howard to liquidate Argentina fund after 18% return

  Bloomberg Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP is closing down its dedicated Argentina fund after the country resolved a legal dispute with creditors that had pushed the nation into default. The Argentina Master Fund produced net returns of 18 percent since it was opened to outside investors in January 2015, when the nation was in the midst of its second ...

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General Motors to invest $740 million in Argentina

  Buenos Aires / AFP General Motors will invest $740 million in its plant in Rosario, Argentina, to produce the Chevrolet Cruze II mostly for export, the US carmaker announced on Thursday. The news came as President Mauricio Macri visited the factory 280 kilometers (174 miles) north of Buenos Aires. The plant expansion will make it possible to produce the Cruze ...

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Oi reports wider loss as mobile customers flee for bigger rivals

  Bloomberg Oi SA, Brazil’s most indebted phone company, said its first-quarter loss widened as customers jumped ship for bigger competitors in the wireless segment. Oi posted a net loss of 1.64 billion reais, according to a statement sent to Brazil’s securities regulator Thursday. That compares with a loss of 880.7 million reais projected by analysts, the average of three ...

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Chile peso falls most in emerging markets as foreigners go short

  Bloomberg The Chilean peso weakened the most among emerging-market currencies as international investors offload their positions on the currency following weak data from China. Foreign investors have increased short positions in the Chilean peso forwards market by $1.2 billion in the past week while local investors, mostly pension funds hedging their currency exposure, have refrained from adding to their ...

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Brazil’s Senate ‘impeaches’ Rousseff after long fight

  BRASILIA / AFP Brazil’s Senate voted on Thursday to impeach President Dilma Rousseff after a months-long fight that laid raw the country’s fury over corruption and economic decay, hurling Latin America’s largest country into political turmoil just months before it hosts the Summer Olympics. Rousseff’s enraged backers called the move a coup d’etat and threatened wide-scale protests and strikes. Her ...

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US court to hear appeal in Abu Ghraib case

  RICHMOND / AFP Four former Iraqi detainees who say they were tortured at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison are asking a federal appeals court to revive their lawsuit. A three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the case on Thursday in Richmond, Virginia. The former detainees sued CACI Premier Technology Inc., an ...

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Border controls in Austria, Germany, Scandinavia

  BRUSSELS / AP The European Union has decided with immediate effect to allow Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway to keep border controls in place for up to six months to deal with the migrant influx. EU headquarters said in a statement on Thursday that the controls should be “targeted and limited in scope, frequency, location and time, to what ...

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