Paris / AFP Sporadic violence erupted as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in dozens of French cities in the latest protests against labour reforms seen as threatening workers’ rights. Police and protesters clashed in western Rennes and Nantes as well as Paris, leaving several injured, as demonstrations across the country aimed to keep up pressure against ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank is struggling to revive the region’s economy, Britain and Greece are moving closer to leaving the European Union — and Switzerland is feeling the pain. The franc has been climbing, again. Since hitting a low of 1.12 against the euro on Feb. 3, the currency has gained almost 3 percent, and is now trading just ...

Frankfurt / AFP Germany at the start of the year introduced a corporate “women’s quota” obliging its 100 biggest companies to fill at least 30 percent of their supervisory board seats with females. But for many, including several of the women executives themselves, the new legislation has so far proved something of a “paper tiger”. “The law is addressing the ...

New York / AFP Confronted with a sluggish global economy, US companies have settled on a controversial tool that rewards shareholders and executives: share buybacks. First permitted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1982, the use of share buybacks has spread rapidly over the last five years due in part to pressure from activist investors anxious for a ...

Washington / AFP US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Europe’s powerful competition commissioner that the EU review of tax breaks given to multinationals could have an “outsized” impact on US companies. In a recent meeting , Lew expressed concerns to Margrethe Vestager, who is leading the campaign to end excessive tax breaks by EU members to huge multinational firms, that ...

Reuters Argentina’s auto production will hold steady or drop slightly this year as sales are hit by the steep recession in main trading partner Brazil, the ADEFA association of vehicle makers said on Saturday. “The external situation will remain complicated,” the president of ADEFA, Enrique Alemany, said in a statement published online. “There are no prospects for a Brazilian recovery.” ...

Reuters A United Nations body has cut its modest economic growth projection for Latin America in 2016 and is now forecasting an average contraction in regional gross domestic product of 0.6 percent. The Santiago-based Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean, citing low commodities prices and financial market volatility, cut its prior call for 0.2 percent average economic growth ...

Reuters California will increase the amount of money new parents can receive through the state’s paid family leave program under a bill to be signed on Monday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. The measure, passed last month by the state legislature, would increase the amount paid to new parents or people caring for a sick family member to as much ...

Bloomberg Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla signed an executive order declaring an emergency period for its Government Development Bank to help keep it operating, while declining to halt or suspend its debt obligations. The Development Bank, which lends to the U.S. commonwealth and its municipalities and is running out of cash, faces a $422 million principal and interest payment ...

BRASILIA / Reuters Brazil’s inflation rate slowed sharply in March to below 10 percent a year, the lowest in nine months, although it still remained well above the government’s target despite a severe recession and one of the world’s highest interest rates. Consumer prices as measured by the benchmark IPCA index rose 9.39 percent in the 12 months through March, ...