Bloomberg It’s not going to get much easier for the restaurant industry. After facing stagnant sales and weak customer traffic in 2018, US restaurants will encounter more headwinds this year, including rising food and wage costs, that may stall profit and hinder efforts to jump start growth. Even the industry stalwarts are dealing with such issues in a fiercely competitive ...

Bloomberg Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. made a mistake selling first- and business-class tickets at a steep discount. Now, the lucky few who made the bookings will travel in style after all. The Hong Kong-based airline said on its Twitter and Facebook pages on Wednesday that it would still welcome passengers that bought the business-class tickets from Vietnam to Canada and ...

Bloomberg The Canadian oil industry could be in for another turbulent year in 2019, depending on how some pivotal events pan out. Government-mandated production cuts and the potential startup of a key crude pipeline are among key developments to watch for this year. While the announcement of production curtailments by Premier Rachel Notley has succeeded in lifting Canadian crude prices ...

Bloomberg India issued a tender to build 7.5-gigawatt of solar power projects in Jammu and Kashmir, state-run Solar Energy Corp of India said on its website. The request is part of a larger plan to build 23 gigawatts of solar capacity in Ladakh, a region in the country’s extreme north bordering China. The capacity is offered in as many as ...

Bloomberg China has sought talks with India to allay concerns on a regional free trade pact it is spearheading, two people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing seeks newer markets amid the ongoing trade war with the US. The 16-country Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has been in the works for a while and China is keen to conclude ...

Bloomberg Tropical Cyclone Penny slammed into the far north coast of Australia’s Queensland state near Rio Tinto Group’s Weipa bauxite mine, triggering warnings of flash flooding and damaging winds. The category 1 cyclone, with wind gusts of up to 100 kilometers per hour, is expected to weaken into a tropical low later Tuesday evening as it crosses Cape York Peninsula, ...

Bloomberg The downturn in Sydney’s property market is set to deepen this year as tighter lending standards and the worst slump in values since the late 1980s cause nervous buyers to sit on the sidelines. Average Sydney home values have fallen 11.1 percent since their 2017 peak, according to CoreLogic Inc. data — surpassing the 9.6 percent top-to-bottom decline when ...

Bloomberg Even after a plunge last month that wiped $46 billion off Chinese health-care stocks, domestic drugmakers may be far from their floor as a Beijing-led policy shift gathers pace. China’s plan to drive down generic drug prices through a centralised bulk procurement programme is set to redraw the industry by forcing its thousands of small generic drugmakers to streamline ...

Bloomberg Coal’s three-year run of blistering gains in Europe is set to end, clobbered by a combination of weakening demand and energy polices aimed at phasing out the dirtiest fossil fuel. After prices more than doubled since 2016 as Asian importers drove demand, coal is expected to fall more than 10 percent to $76.50 a tonne this year in Europe, ...

Bloomberg UK manufacturing growth unexpectedly improved to a six-month high in December 2018, as companies built up inventories and boosted new orders in preparation for a potentially disruptive Brexit. IHS Markit’s Purchasing Managers Index for the industry rose to 54.2, more than the 52.5 expected by economists. Still, the average reading for the final three months of 2018 was the ...