Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. cracked down on fake reviews two years ago by prohibiting shoppers from getting free products directly from merchants in exchange for writing reviews. It was a major turning point for the world’s largest online retailer, which had previously seen “incentivised reviews” as a key way for consumers to discover new products. Amazon changed course because it realised …

NEW YORK / WAM The United Arab Emirates and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have announced a new Memorandum of Understanding that will allow UAE nationals to join the agency as full-time staff under a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) Programme. The agreement was signed by Reem Al Hashemy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, and Achim Steiner, Administrator of …

ABU DHABI / Emirates Business A predicted boom in flexible working could contribute $10.04 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to the first comprehensive socio-economic study of changing workplace practices. The analysis, commissioned by Regus and conducted by independent economists, studied 16 key countries to delve into the state of flexible working both now and through 2030. Regus …

Bloomberg Oil hit the lowest in a month after the US government data showed expanding crude stockpiles. Futures fell as much as 3.2 percent in New York on Wednesday. Domestic crude inventories rose by more than twice the rate forecast by analysts last week, according to the Energy Information Administration. Stored supplies have been growing for four weeks, the longest …

Bloomberg Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) again sought to reassure markets after one of its biggest customers complained about the pain of high prices. “There is no cause for alarm,” Opec Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said, adding that India had sent a letter bemoaning the state of the oil market. While insisting supplies are sufficient, he neglected to specify how …

Bloomberg Drax Group Plc agreed to buy some of Iberdrola SA’s power plants for 702 million pounds ($923 million), boosting its clean energy assets in a further shift away from burning coal. The acquisition involves pumped storage, renewable hydro and gas-fired power assets and will increase the utility’s generation capacity by more than 60 percent to about 6.6 gigawatts, Chief …

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc’s pension manager plans to invest 250 million pounds ($329 million) of its pension scheme into renewable energy infrastructure for wind and solar in the UK, joining around 30 other firms making similar climate change pledges. Amazon.com Inc. also committed to installing 20 megawatts of solar power at depots around the country, while EDF Energy Plc said …

Bloomberg PG&E Corp. has deliberately left customers in the dark for the first time as a precaution to prevent wildfires from breaking out. Almost 60,000 customers in six counties across the Sierra Nevada foothills and Northern California country were blacked out during a windstorm, according to Melissa Subbotin, a company spokeswoman. About 70 percent of those customers will have electricity …

Bloomberg US stocks fell as the week’s second big serving of corporate earnings did much less to reassure bulls than the previous day’s almost uniformly strong reports. The dollar and Treasuries rose. The S&P 500 Index slid back below 2,800, heading for a second loss in three days. IBM’s disappointing results dragged the Dow Jones Industrial Average lower by more …

Bloomberg Europe’s dark pools are filling up with equities again as some trading bans imposed under the MiFID II rules get lifted. About 8 percent of all equities trading took place on private stock markets known as dark venues in the past month, after regulators ended suspensions on nearly half of the previously affected stocks, according to a Bloomberg calculation …