HONG KONG / AP Hong Kong’s customs chief on Wednesday denied suggestions that Beijing was involved in the investigation into nine armored personnel carriers belonging to Singapore that were seized in the Chinese-controlled territory. Commissioner Roy Tang said his department was acting only under Hong Kong law when it impounded the nine SAF Terrex infantry carriers and other equipment. He ...

  PARIS / AP The real winner of France’s left-wing presidential primary may be a man who demonstrably shunned it: Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old former investment banker and ex-economy minister with pro-free market, pro-European views has chosen not to take part in the Socialist primary. Instead, in recent days he has been drawing attention away from the campaign by traveling to ...

  MAIDUGURI / AP At least four people were killed in three attacks by suicide bombers in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, police and witnesses said on Wednesday. The first attack late Tuesday involved a male bomber who was shot dead by a military sniper after he was seen moving towards a security checkpoint, said Damian Chukwu, police commissioner of Borno ...

  Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added $7.5 billion to its market value after reporting quarterly results that beat estimates and raising its full-year sales forecast. China’s biggest e-commerce company increased its projection for fiscal 2017 revenue growth to 53 percent, from 48 percent previously, as Chinese spending stays strong and the company wrings revenue from fledgling areas such as ...

  Bloomberg Boeing Co. profit rose as the 787 Dreamliner emerged from a decade of losses and helped the planemaker weather a turbulent market for wide-body jetliners. Adjusted earnings were $2.47 a share, despite an accounting loss for an aerial tanker program, the company said on Wednesday in a statement. That exceeded the $2.32 average of analyst estimates compiled by ...

  Bloomberg Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc’s credit rating to three levels above junk after factoring in 670 million pounds ($836 million) in fines for bribery and corruption charges. The aircraft engine-maker’s long-term investment rating has been downgraded to BBB+ from A-, S&P said in a statement, cautioning that a new mandatory accounting system could weigh on ...

  Bloomberg The European Union will propose extending an exemption on foreign flights from its carbon market until 2020 after nations worldwide reached a historic deal last year to introduce a global system to curb the growth of emissions from airlines. The European Commission, the EU’s regulatory arm, will probably present a draft law on Feb. 3 sparing carriers, ranging ...

  Bloomberg Thailand is due to roll out a national digital-payment system that levies much smaller transaction fees than the nation’s banks. Yet lenders expect the network to help rather than hinder them financially. Commercial banks could save some 77 billion baht ($2.18 billion) in the next 10 years as the so-called PromptPay service curbs the use of cash, according ...

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co., the lender struggling to recover from a scandal involving bogus customer accounts, is eliminating its practice of giving retail bankers a day’s notice before internal inspectors visit a branch. The bank’s “branch control review process has evolved over the years to consist of electronic, centralized documents that are reviewed outside and in advance of ...

  Bloomberg Bank of Montreal (BMO) expects to capture a bigger share of US dealmaking in 2017 by winning more mandates for advising on takeovers and managing stock sales, building off its most successful year in US capital markets. “In a challenging year in ’16 we managed to take market share,” Peter Myers, 57, head of US investment and corporate ...