In 2014, the US led the effort by governments to blunt the world’s biggest outbreak of Ebola, which took more than 11,000 lives in West Africa before it was declared over in mid-2016. Now, a smaller but more complex outbreak rages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the US response has been shaped by indifference and bureaucratic haggling. The ...

Jerome Powell’s half-hearted rate cut incensed President Donald Trump, who immediately took to Twitter to say the chairman of the US Federal Reserve had “let us down”. Global equities sunk and the dollar strengthened as Powell chose to cut rates by a quarter- rather than a half-point and said this wasn’t the start of a “lengthy cutting cycle.” But the ...

With trade talks collapsing between the US and China in Shanghai, there’s even less hope of any resumption in American farm exports, which were once portrayed as the foundation of any agreement. That’s not good enough, according to President Donald Trump. Had a trade detente materialised, those expecting a rapid return to the status quo on farm trade likely would ...

Can the company behind Aston Martin avoid tapping its shareholders? Yes, if everything goes to plan. The snag is that Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc is proving increasingly accident prone. Shares in the sports car maker fell as much as 22 percent. That’s all too familiar. The stock dropped 26 percent and 18 percent on consecutive days last week. ...

Backyard industrialisation has been tried; it was a miserable failure. During the so-called Great Leap Forward in China under Mao Zedong, peasants were encouraged to erect steel furnaces in their back yards. Predictably, most people had no idea how to build a mini steel plant much less make steel, and there was no market for their wares. The result was ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc generated less than half of its total quarterly revenue from sales of the iPhone for the first time since 2012 — a sign the company is entering life beyond its flagship product. While Apple reported a record $11.5 billion in sales of services in the fiscal third quarter, and demonstrated strong performances from wearables such as the ...

Bloomberg A voice software tech developer is suing Amazon.com, saying the e-commerce giant infringed on patents when developing software for the Alexa digital assistant. VB Assets LLC, which owns the rights to some of the technology developed by voice software pioneer VoiceBox Technologies, said in a lawsuit filed in Delaware federal court that Amazon infringed on six of its patents ...

Bloomberg BMW AG’s profit fell 20 percent in the second quarter as the company accelerates a rollout of electric vehicles. In Chief Executive Officer Harald Krueger’s final quarter, earnings before interest and taxes declined to 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) from 2.74 billion euros a year earlier. Analysts had expected 2.19 billion euros. After a loss in the first quarter, ...

Bloomberg As Ford Motor Co bears down on a self-imposed deadline to field robotaxis and driverless delivery vehicles in two years, the automaker has acquired a small defense contractor whose experience could help get auto-piloted cars on the road. Ford paid an undisclosed sum to acquire Quantum Signal AI, a 40-member team of roboticists operating out of a decommissioned 1930s-era ...

Bloomberg British Airways (BA) will continue talks with pilot representatives next week in a bid to defuse a pay dispute and avoid a walkout by its most crucial employees at the height of the summer travel season. The British Airlines Pilots Association (Balpa) agreed to extend negotiations with former the former UK flag carrier, now a unit of IAG SA, ...