Bloomberg Investors pushed the value of Instacart Inc to $17.7 billion in a new private funding round, more than doubling the valuation of the grocery-delivery startup since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Valiant Peregrine Fund and Daniel Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners, two existing investors in Instacart, led the round, the grocery startup said. Instacart plans to use the $200 ...

Bloomberg Tens of thousands of Thai protesters defied police barricades and pro-establishment groups in Bangkok on Wednesday for the most tense demonstration yet in a student-led push for greater democracy and less power for the monarchy. The protesters pushed through several blockades made of transit buses, fences and barbed wires during their 2-kilometre march to Government House, the office of ...

Bloomberg The European Union is poised to blacklist six people and one entity in Russia over the attempted murder of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. EU member-state envoys in Brussels cleared the way on Wednesday for bloc-wide asset freezes on the Russian officials and the organisation as well as travel bans on the individuals, according to a person familiar with the ...

Bloomberg The largest party in Malaysia’s ruling coalition threatened to pull out unless it gets better terms, adding pressure on PM Muhyiddin Yassin to shore up his unstable government or call a snap election. The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which holds about a third of the seats in Muhyiddin’s 12-party government, said in a statement that it would enter ...

Bloomberg Kyrgyzstan’s parliament confirmed Sadyr Japarov as prime minister for the second time in five days after President Sooronbay Jeenbekov gave in to pressure to appoint the politician freed from prison by protesters last week. Jeenbekov’s move came a day after he’d rejected parliament’s unanimous appointment of Japarov as premier. In an address to the nation published on the presidential ...

Bloomberg Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spent weeks refusing to answer whether he would give in to liberals and agree to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court, but when he finally responded, he left himself plenty of wiggle room. The answer — “I’m not a fan of court packing” — was open enough to give comfort to ...

Bloomberg A wave of demonstrations in Nigeria against police brutality showed no signs of letting up on Wednesday, with a 10th straight day of marches being staged in Abuja, the capital, and Lagos, the commercial hub. Several main streets and bridges in Lagos will be sealed off until police officers who shot dead a participant in an October 12 march ...

Bloomberg US states saw their tax revenue drop by about $31 billion, or 6%, from March through August, compared to the same period a year earlier, as the pandemic triggered economic shutdowns across the country, according to a data from 44 states compiled by the Urban Institute. The scale of the drop appears smaller than expected, relative to the depth ...

Bloomberg Germany’s economy is losing steam but will do slightly better than government forecasts as fears grow over rising coronavirus infections, according to the country’ s five leading research institutes. Gross domestic product will contract by 5.4% in 2020 and grow 4.7% next year, the experts predicted in their latest bi-annual outlook published on Wednesday. In their spring report, they ...

Bloomberg Wealthy buyers of mansions and penthouse apartments in London are finding that the pandemic isn’t throwing bargains their way. Luxury homes that changed hands for more than $13 million in the second quarter sold at an average 95% of their asking prices, according to latest data from broker Knight Frank. That was the smallest discount since the end of ...