Bloomberg UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer, reported second-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates, driven by growth at its Optum technology and consulting unit. Optum, whose businesses range from data analysis to running clinics, has accounted for an increasing chunk of UnitedHealth’s profit. That helped cushion an additional $200 million loss from sales of Affordable Care Act ...

  Kiev / AFP Ukraine said on Tuesday seven of its soldiers had been killed and 14 wounded in “very heated” fighting that marked the bloodiest clashes with pro-Russian separatists in two months. The announcement — the highest daily death toll since Ukraine reported seven of its soldiers dying on May 24 — follows a flurry of talks between world ...

  London, United Kingdom / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday became the first senior foreign official to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May since she took office after the Brexit referendum. Kerry visited May at her Downing Street office on the last day of a five-stop tour of European capitals, ahead of talks with the British, ...

  Paris / AFP French lawmakers, prompted by the Bastille Day massacre in Nice, were on Tuesday to debate extending the country’s state of emergency for a fourth time amid mounting criticism of the government’s response to extremist attacks. President Francois Hollande had announced last Thursday that he planned to lift the measures on July 26. But within hours, he ...

  Cleveland / AFP Donald Trump faced an embarrassing plagiarism scandal on Tuesday that tarnished his wife Melania’s prime-time speech to a Republican National Convention already roiled by an opening day rank-and-file revolt. It was a rough start to the four-day political jamboree, which was designed to crown Trump as the presidential nominee and catapult the party toward November’s elections. ...

  Wuerzburg/ AFP A 17-year-old Afghan refugee who attacked four people with an axe on a German train had an Islamic State flag at his house, police said on Tuesday shortly before the extremist group claimed him as one of its fighters. German authorities said they had found the hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the asylum-seeker, who seriously ...

  WASHINGTON Let’s salute an unlikely champion of saving energy and switching to alternative fuels — the US Navy. Once a supreme fuel-guzzler whose energy needs sometimes dictated foreign policy, the Navy has become a model for how the country can curb its appetite for fossil fuels. The Navy’s energy diet began seven years ago with an edict from newly ...

  An ambitious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that brings 12 nations together, and accounts for 40 percent of the global economy, faces enormous challenges in terms of ratification in the US Congress, and rejection by the presidential candidates. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has outrightly rejected the TPP though a number of Republicans more Democrats back the agreement. Democratic ...

  Harsh V. Pant SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Dealing a major blow to Beijing’s insistence that it has special rights to South China Sea and in a victory for the Philippines, an international tribunal of judges decided that China’s claims to the critical waterway are without legal merit. The ruling, handed down by a tribunal based at the Hague’s Permanent ...

  There seems to be this idea that just won’t go away — that two or more quarters of negative economic growth mark a recession. This is, of course, incorrect. But it persists, and seems to get new life with every unsettling economic event, because people don’t understand the basics surrounding what an economic contraction is or how we measure ...