Kolkata / AFP Four people were killed when the crude bombs they were making exploded in India’s West Bengal, where bitterly fought state elections are underway, a senior police official said on Monday. Another six people were injured in the explosion on Sunday night in a village about 360 kilometres (220 miles) north of Kolkata, close to the eastern ...

  BLOOMBERG With many markets across the world closed, investors pared back higher-risk holdings, keeping the Japanese yen near its strongest level in 18 months. Gold advanced with sovereign bonds, oil declined and European equities held onto their biggest loss in two months. Japan led a selloff in Asian equities, with the Topix index sliding for a fifth day as ...

  ABU DHABI / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Emirates Securities Market Index has decreased by -1.05% to close at 4528.92 points. Accordingly the Market Capitalization has lost AED 7.76 billion attaining AED 734.65 billion. A total of 399.22 Million Shares were traded with a total value of AED 0.63 billion during the trading session of 02-05-2016 through 6588 transactions. The number of companies ...

  Sydney / AFP Australian banking heavyweight Westpac posted a three percent rise in interim net profit on Monday as it battles regulatory changes and rising bad loans, disappointing investors who savaged the share price. Westpac’s Aus$3.70 billion (US$2.81 billion) result in the six months to March 31 kicked off a week of half-yearly reporting from the nation’s top lenders, ...

  DOHA / Reuters Qatar National Bank (QNB), the Middle East’s largest lender by assets, said it had taken immediate steps to ensure customers would not suffer any financial loss after a security breach last week exposed personal data of thousands of clients. “We are taking every measure to protect the privacy of our customers and have engaged an external third ...

  Bloomberg Hackers are likely to get away with about $70 million of Bangladesh’s foreign reserves after a brazen cyber-attack against the South Asian nation, according to Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith. The Philippines — where most of the funds ended up — will probably recover as much as $10 million of the $81 million stolen in February from ...

  Bloomberg Spanish banks are gobbling up a growing slice of Portugal’s financial industry, taking advantage of the country’s halting recovery from Europe’s debt crisis. CaixaBank SA, a Barcelona-based giant, is the latest pursuer, offering about 900 million euros ($1 billion) last month for the portion of Oporto-based Banco BPI SA that it doesn’t own. The deal would mark the ...

  Reuters Qatar’s central bank will offer 2 billion riyals ($550 million) of Treasury bills in an auction this week, according to an invitation sent to banks. Bids will be made on Monday while the results of the auction will be announced on Tuesday. The offer comprises 1 billion riyals of three-month bills, 500 million riyals of six-month bills and ...

  Bloomberg Australian lenders are clamping down on home loans to foreigners as concerns about the health of the nation’s housing market mount. Westpac Banking Corp. will no longer lend to offshore customers who aren’t citizens or who don’t hold appropriate residency visas, it said in an e-mail. It follows Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank Ltd. and Australia ...

  Bloomberg Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said the central bank’s Financial Policy Committee won’t hold back from quashing risks that appear in the housing market. In a speech in London, the deputy governor for financial stability highlighted three property “hotspots” that warrant attention: buy-to-let, lending at high loan-to-income ratios to owner occupiers and commercial real estate. He ...