Bloomberg Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, whose fertilizer company is investing more than $6 billion in potash mining, said it could take at least a decade for the potash market to work off the excess because of the past “disruptive” actions by the largest sellers. Potash prices have collapsed since 2013, when a trade pact between Russian and Belarusian producers, ...

  Bloomberg Fewer Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, indicating the US job market remains healthy. Jobless claims fell by 4,000 to 262,000 in the week ended Aug. 13, the smallest level in a month, a Labor Department report showed Thursday in Washington. The median forecast of 42 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 265,000. Low ...

  New York / AFP Wal-Mart Stores reported higher second-quarter earnings and lifted its profit forecast on Thursday after notching higher sales in the US. Earnings for the quarter ending July 31 were $3.8 billion, up 8.6 percent from the year-ago period. Sales were up 0.5 percent at $120.9 billion. Wal-Mart scored higher comparable sales and customer traffic in the ...

  California / AFP Weary firefighters on Thursday battled a raging inferno that was threatening the homes of more than 82,000 people in southern California and sent flaming “firenadoes” tearing across the brush. Nearly 1,600 firefighters were fighting the giant blaze, but had only contained four percent of it, according to a fire service official. Dramatic local TV news footage ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Israel’s hardline defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has a new “carrot and stick” policy for the West Bank that will penalise the hometowns of Palestinian attackers while rewarding others, his ministry said on Thursday. Under the policy, Palestinian families, villages and towns that are linked to attackers will face extra punitive measures, while those that are not will ...

  Hanoi / AFP Two senior communist officials were shot dead by a colleague at their offices in northern Vietnam, state media reported on Thursday, a rare high profile gun homicide in the country. Northern Yen Bai province’s most senior official, party chief Pham Duy Cuong and head of the provincial people’s council Ngo Ngoc Tuan, were gunned down by a ...

  Ankara/ AFP Eastern Turkey was rocked by two deadly bombings against police as Kurdish guerrillas launched a new campaign of attacks targeting areas that are not predominantly Kurdish. The car bombings—less than 12 hours apart—killed at least 10 people in total and injured over 200, officials said Thursday, blaming the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The rebels, who have been ...

  Khartoum / AFP UN chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed disappointment over the failure of talks between the Sudanese government and rebels on a ceasefire in Darfur and two other conflict zones. The talks on a cessation of hostilities in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan were held in Addis Ababa last week after three prominent rebel groups signed a roadmap ...

Tokyo / AFP Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday as her country’s new civilian authorities seeks to cement ties with Beijing—long the former military junta’s protector. The five-day visit—with the suspension of a giant Beijing-backed dam project set to dominate talks—is Suu Kyi’s first major foreign trip since her government took ...

  We are such an anxiety-ridden society that we worry about problems that haven’t happened, and, almost certainly, won’t. Robots are an apt example. Even McKinsey and Co., the high-powered management consulting firm, professes to be concerned. We imagine hordes of robots destroying jobs, leaving millions of middle-class families without work and income. Relax. Unless we adopt self-destructive policies, this ...