Bloomberg Philippine boxer-turned-presidential candidate Manny Pacquiao said he will form a “peace panel” that will negotiate with Beijing on the South China Sea dispute if elected to the top post, while also deepening defense ties with the US. “Our goal is to be a friend to all nations,” Pacquiao said at a virtual forum. The senator said that while ...

  Bloomberg While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has downplayed the likelihood of a large-scale invasion as Russia masses troops near the border, he is targeting what he sees as another threat to his country’s sovereignty: oligarchs. The president in a national address slammed unidentified businesspeople for fleeing the country in the face of a US warning of a potential imminent ...

  Bloomberg UK inflation unexpectedly accelerated for a fourth straight month in January, a surprise that highlights a brutal cost-of-living crisis that’s only set to worsen this year. Annual price growth rises to 5.5 percent, a new 30-year high, driven by clothing and footwear, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. Both economists and the Bank of England had ...

  Bloomberg Trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland surged during 2021 following the UKs formal departure from the European Union. Imports from Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic jumped 65% compared to a year earlier, while exports from the Republic to Northern Ireland rise 54%, Ireland’s Central Statistics Office said. Meanwhile, imports to Ireland from the rest of the UK ...

  Bloomberg Telecom Italia SpA, the phone carrier targeted in November by KKR & Co, is weighing reducing its Italian workforce by as much as one fifth amid faltering profit during the pandemic and heightened competition in its home market. Pietro Labriola, who took over as the ex-monopolist’s chief executive officer last month, is mulling a three-year restructuring plan that ...

  Bloomberg Colombia’s economy blew away forecasts as it grew at the fastest pace in more than a century last year, driven by a rebound in consumer demand after pandemic curbs were eased, and soaring prices for the nation’s oil, coal and coffee. Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 10.6% in 2021, the nation’s statistics agency said Tuesday. That’s the fastest ...

  Bloomberg Meta Platforms Inc. was finally allowed to complete its acquisition of Kustomer, a customer service software company, after more than a year of antitrust scrutiny. Meta, which owns Facebook, announced that the deal “complied with all regulatory requirements” in a blog update. Meta first announced the acquisition, valued at more than $1 billion, in November 2020, but the ...

  Bloomberg Oceans along the US coastline will rise faster within the next three decades than they did in the past 100 years, bringing more flooding to coastal cities such as New York and Miami, according to the latest projections. Sea levels are expected to rise as much as 12 inches by 2050, according to a report led by the ...

  Bloomberg Stocks rise on Wednesday as traders weighed the prospect of diminishing tension over Ukraine and the risk of further twists after Russia said it was withdrawing some forces. Shares were up in Japan, Hong Kong and China, where slowing inflation is boosting the central bank’s scope to ease policy to prop up growth. US futures were stable and ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s sovereign yield curve has been jolted into life as a buyer’s strike and dovish central bank triggers a sharp steepening — setting the market aside from global peers. The move looks set to continue as the big institutions that dominate purchases of super-long maturities stick to the sidelines, hurt by the recent turmoil in global stocks and ...