Bloomberg US and Brazilian authorities are set to impose $2.5 billion in foreign-corruption penalties on Odebrecht SA, Latin America’s biggest construction company, and an affiliate for violating anti-bribery laws, people familiar with the discussions said. Prosecutors say Odebrecht and the affiliate, Braskem SA, paid officials at Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the state-run oil producer known as Petrobras, to win contracts. ...

  Bloomberg The Canadian government’s approval of two major oil export pipelines may mean the death knell for a third. For more than two years, TransCanada Corp.’s proposed 1.1 million barrel-a-day Energy East pipeline, designed to run from Alberta to New Brunswick, has been mired in regulatory hearings and opposition from environmentalists. Now, the hurdles it faces may be even ...

  Washington / AFP The USA unemployment rate in November fell to its lowest level since August 2007 as the economy continued to add new jobs, all but guaranteeing an interest rate hike this month. The jobless rate fell an unusually large three-tenths to a surprising 4.6 percent, the Labor Department reported. A solid 178,000 net new positions were created, ...

  Bloomberg AT&T Inc.’s aggressive pricing strategies in Mexico are causing the company to lose “a lot” of money, said Carlos Slim, the billionaire who controls the phone giant’s biggest rival. “You can see it in their balance sheets,” he said. AT&T’s low-cost plans are taking market share from other competitors but not from Slim’s America Movil SAB, which has ...

  Beijing / AFP China protested to Washington on Saturday after US President-elect Donald Trump broke with decades of foreign policy and spoke with the president of Taiwan. It was not immediately clear whether Trump’s telephone call with Tsai Ing-wen marked a deliberate pivot away from Washington’s official “One China” stance, but it fuelled fears he is improvising on international ...

  Moscow / AFP Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday ahead of a visit to Japan by President Vladimir Putin that the countries’ leaders are pushing to end a territorial row dating back to World War II. Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have been strained for decades over of the status of four Pacific islands near Japan’s north ...

  Libreville/ AFP Gabon’s parliamentary elections, which had been due to take place this month, have been postponed for up to seven months, the interior ministry said, citing a lack of funds. The decision to delay the vote, which must now take place no later than July 29, 2017, was taken by Gabon’s constitutional court after the electoral commission told ...

  Rome/ AFP With campaigning over, media silence was imposed across Italy on Saturday on the eve of a constitutional referendum seen as crucial to the future of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. In the frantic final round of campaigning which ended on Friday, Renzi’s domestic rivals vowed to knock down referendum proposals to streamline parliament and force the centre-left leader out ...

  New Delhi / AFP Britain’s former premier said on Saturday the election of France’s Marine Le Pen would be a “big body blow” for Europe, saying he hoped for the victory of a mainstream party. David Cameron said the recent rise of “anti-system, populist” and “quite extreme political parties” in western Europe did not mark the end of globalisation, but ...

  Kuala Lumpur/ AFP Relatives of missing MH370 passengers were headed to Madagascar on Saturday, harbouring hopes of finding seaborne debris, 1,001 days since the mysterious disappearance of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines jet. Four Malaysians and two Chinese nationals left from Kuala Lumpur and will be joined in Madagascar by other MH370 next-of-kin travelling from France. The Boeing 777 jet was ...