Bloomberg India’s government increased security in the capital New Delhi after thousands of protesting farmers broke police barricades and stormed key landmarks in a serious escalation of monthslong demonstrations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new agriculture laws. By Wednesday most demonstrators had returned to protest sites on the outskirts of the city following calls from one of the largest farm ...

Bloomberg The resignation of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has sparked a fresh round of back-room plotting and negotiating as the pandemic rages and the economy tanks. The biggest question is whether he will get back in the saddle. Conte is a survivor, but he has no political party of his own as he tries to recruit a new, broader ...

Bloomberg Europe’s economy is starting to follow the familiar script of lagging its international peers when recovering from a crisis. That was the upshot of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) forecasts, which downgraded the growth outlook for 2021 across Europe and underscored a generally poorer performance compared with China and the US. Such diverging fortunes reflect the stringency of lockdowns ...

Bloomberg Argentina posted its first trade deficit since August 2018 as exports collapsed after a lengthy strike in some port operations. The country recorded a trade deficit of $364 million in December, compared to a $500 million surplus forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey, government data published Tuesday showed. While imports grew 25% in annual terms driven by an ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. said fiscal second-quarter sales rise 17%, a faster clip than analysts projected, thanks to buoyant demand for corporate cloud-computing services and software tools that support at-home workers. Revenue in the period ended December 31 rise to $43.1 billion, the Redmond, Washington-based software maker said in a statement. That exceeded the $40.2 billion average estimate of analysts polled ...

Bloomberg UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak will hold talks with his Swiss counterpart as the two countries seek to deepen financial services ties in the wake of Brexit. The virtual discussions with Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer will focus on the goal of “a comprehensive mutual recognition agreement” to cut costs and barriers for UK firms operating in Switzerland ...

Bloomberg The Czech Republic may raise interest rates as many as two times this year, central bank Governor Jiri Rusnok said, departing from the global trend of pursuing ultra-loose monetary policy against the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. Rusnok, speaking in an interview, said he sees economic growth picking up in the second half of the year, partly due to progress on ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff proposed temporarily allowing expanded debt spending by Germany’s federal government, prompting a swift rejection from officials in his own party. Helge Braun, Merkel’s chancellery minister, wrote in Handelsblatt newspaper that the country’s so-called debt brake, which is enshrined in the constitution, should be altered to allow more borrowing to help offset the impact ...

Bloomberg Japan’s equity rally last year in the face of foreign selling is challenging conventional wisdom that purchases by overseas investors are necessary for the market to keep rising. And that breakdown in correlation bodes well for the country’s shares. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average advanced 16% in 2020 despite more than 6 trillion yen ($58 billion) of foreign net ...

Bloomberg Stocks drifted lower with US equity futures on Wednesday as investors weighed earnings reports and awaited the conclusion of the first Federal Reserve policy meeting of the year. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index opened modestly down amid a wave of corporate results. Luxury conglomerate LVMH edged higher after sales of fashion and leather goods soared in the fourth quarter. ...