Bloomberg A string of mass abductions is disrupting education in Africa’s most populous country, which already ranks among places with one of the highest number of out-of-school children globally. In the most recent incident, armed men on motorbikes seized 317 girls at a school in the northern state of Zamfara. The students were taken into a forest, where they are ...

Bloomberg The US merchandise-trade deficit widened in January as imports climbed to a record high, signalling a continuing recovery in demand from American consumers. The deficit grew to $83.7 billion from $83.2 billion in December, according to Commerce Department data. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had called for an $83 billion shortfall in January. Imports rise 1.1% to $218.9 billion, ...

Bloomberg The UK is set to create a 5 billion-pound ($7 billion) grant program to help businesses that have been hard hit by the pandemic. The ‘Restart’ program will mostly apply to retail, hospitality and leisure — the industries that have been impacted most by the series of lockdowns imposed in the last year. The plan will be announced on ...

Bloomberg Norway’s $1.3 trillion wealth fund, the world’s biggest, is handicapped in chasing its environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment goals by the political process, according to Global SWF. The lengthy decision-making that determines which asset classes Norway’s investing behemoth can buy puts it at a disadvantage compared with smaller money managers, “in particular” regarding ESG, according to Diego Lopez, ...

Bloomberg Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will slash its manufacturing capacity by 25% over five years and write off investment in products it’s decided to scrap under new Chief Executive Officer Thierry Bollore. The British carmaker will take a non-cash charge of about 1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) in the quarter ending in March related to higher previous spending and projects ...

Bloomberg European credit markets have just completed a round-trip recovery from peak pandemic fear. Borrowing costs are retreading pre-crisis levels, with confidence in an economic recovery sparking double-digit gains in the riskiest debt. Healthier balance sheets are turning 2021 into the year of the rising star as more companies re-establish investment-grade credentials — the reversal of 2020’s swell of fallen-angel ...

Bloomberg Investors will soon discover if Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index will undertake one of the biggest overhauls in its 51-year history, a move that would impact tens of billions of dollars in funds tracking the stock benchmark. On Monday, Hang Seng Indexes Co. will offer its conclusion after an industry consultation over proposed measures to the city’s stock benchmark, ...

Bloomberg US regulators are engaging in the stock market’s version of whack-a-mole — racing to suspend shares of companies with dubious prospects that have been hyped to the moon on social media. In a statement, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it temporarily halted trading in 15 companies due to concerns that their stock prices were artificially inflated. One ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE expressed its support for the Saudi Arabian foreign ministry’s statement regarding Jamal Khashoggi. In a statement on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation expressed its confidence in and support for the Saudi judiciary, as well as Saudi Arabia’s commitment to enforcing the law with transparency and integrity, and holding those responsible ...

Bloomberg The decline of Angola, from being Africa’s top crude producer five years ago to barely pumping more than war-torn Libya, shows the heavy toll of a slump in oil-industry investment. The nation’s production has fallen by more than a third since 2015, when international oil companies started slashing investment in response to a plunge in crude prices. Despite government ...