Reuters Bahrain Telecommunications Co (Batelco) posted a 33 percent fall in first-quarter profit as its subscriber base and revenue both declined. Batelco made a net profit of 9.6 million Bahraini dinars ($25.46 million) in the three months to March 31, it said in a statement. This compares with a profit of 14.2 million dinars a year earlier. SICO Bahrain ...

  Yangon / AFP Hundreds of Myanmar villagers rallied on Saturday against a controversial Chinese-backed copper mine, activists said, reigniting a contentious issue that could pose an early challenge to Aung San Suu Kyi’s new government. The Letpadaung mine in the central town of Monywa has for years been dogged by complaints of land-grabbing, environmental damage and brutal police crackdowns on ...

  Beijing / Bloomberg China’s foreign-exchange reserves increased for the second month in a row as market sentiment toward the yuan improved and a stronger yen and euro boosted the headline number. The world’s largest currency hoard rose by $7.089 billion to $3.22 trillion in April, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement on Saturday. That compares with ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg Sharp Corp. fell the most in almost two months on concerns that the Japanese company’s loss for the last fiscal year will be far wider than forecast. The company may report a net loss of 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion), according to a person familiar with the matter, almost double the 161 billion yen that analysts ...

  New Delhi / Bloomberg New Delhi’s electricity regulator directed state-run utility NTPC Ltd. to refrain from cutting supplies to two city power retailers over unpaid dues after the generator threatened to halt sales to India’s capital. In a meeting, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission asked NTPC and the two distributors — BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd. and BSES Yamuna Power ...

  New Delhi / Bloomberg Indian gold imports slumped for the third straight month in April as a rally in prices sapped demand, according to a person familiar with provisional Finance Ministry data. Overseas purchases fell 74 percent to about 22.3 metric tons valued at 60 billion rupees ($901 million), compared with 84.3 tons or 193 billion rupees a year ...

  Athens / AFP Public transport ground to a halt in Greece as trade unions launched a 48-hour general strike against government plans to overhaul pensions and increase taxes, as demanded by international creditors. No trains were running across the country, and boats linking the Greek mainland to the islands were anchored at ports. In the capital Athens, the metro, ...

  Bloomberg Pound bears who have made the British currency the worst performer among developed nations in 2016, will have a raft of economic data and a Bank of England policy statement next week to help them assess whether gloom is still justified. Bulls retreated, as sterling snapped a three-week gain versus the dollar that was driven by easing concern ...

  Bloomberg Government bonds from the euro region’s so-called peripheral nations may further underperform German securities with a banking crisis in Italy and political gridlock in Spain far from being resolved. While euro-area sovereign bonds are supported by the European Central Bank’s €80 billion ($91 billion) a month asset-purchase program, domestic solvency worries are back in focus. Even as Italian ...

Paris / AFP Standard and Poor’s upgraded its outlook for Turkey’s credit rating, judging the prospects for the nation’s economy to be stable despite political instability that may dampen growth and reform plans. The end to the negative outlook on the BB+ foreign currency rating, one rung below an investment grade, came a day after President RecepTayyipErdogan’s plans to consolidate ...