Bloomberg Uber Technologies Inc. tried to assuage investors’ concerns that a series of scandals were taking a toll on the business. It told them to expect improved bookings, narrower losses and a possible settlement with Alphabet Inc. that could resolve one of the company’s biggest legal hurdles. On a conference call with investors, Uber executives said gross bookings increased more ...

Bloomberg ­­More than 300 wildfires in British Columbia have forced Canadian lumber mills and an Enbridge Inc. natural gas compressor station to shut as hot, dry weather fans blazes across swaths of west Canada and US. Enbridge said that it has closed a compressor station on its T-South pipeline, which carries natural gas from northern B.C. to the US border. ...

Bloomberg As automakers in the US struggle to keep selling new cars to American consumers at a record clip, Toyota Motor Corp. plans to turn to rental car companies and other fleet operators for a boost. Toyota will nearly match last year’s total sales to fleet customers, which means the company has some catching up to do. Deliveries to rental ...

Bloomberg Poland’s parliament started debate on legislation to raise the tax on petrol, reversing on an election promise even after producing a reported budget surplus in the first half. The ruling party proposed the tariff to provide as much as 5 billion zloty ($1.3 billion) a year to the budget, according to parliament’s website. Law & Justice, which vowed not ...

Bloomberg At least one media mogul is expecting to see a lot more deals like AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner Inc., and the seeds for such megamergers could be planted this week in a resort town in Idaho. Pay-TV providers and phone companies like AT&T are realizing they need exclusive programming to set themselves apart in a ...

What lessons can we take from the IS’s defeat in Mosul and its coming eviction from Raqqa? The collapse of the ‘caliphate’ tells us that the US can succeed militarily in the Middle East if — and probably only if — it works with local forces who are prepared to do the fighting and dying. Where the massive US ground ...

There’s a green bubble in India, with investors flocking to fund a planned tripling of renewable energy capacity over the next five years. Luckily for Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the more gung-ho backers of solar, wind and hydroelectric power in the country, there’s a bigger bubble out there — in global bond markets — that’s allowing the green ...

Donald Trump won the US presidency in large part on a promise to help American workers displaced by trade and technology. That’s a worthy goal — but if he wants to deliver, he’ll have to rethink his approach. Above all, he’ll need to recognize that the modern economy is not just about digging holes and bashing metal. To date, Trump ...

The International Monetary Fund just pointed out that “South Africa’s vulnerabilities have become more pronounced.” That’s one way of putting it. A potentially prosperous and dynamic economy is on the fast track to ruin. Altering its course will take real political reform. Unemployment has risen five percentage points since 2008, to a hope-crushing 28 percent. The country’s population is expanding ...

Will China ever become democratic? That question has been a staple of geopolitical discussion since the 1990s, and at times many commentators thought a democratic China was not so far away. Today, as restrictions on political speech and opposition increase, hardly anyone thinks this is a realistic scenario. Yet it’s still worth asking why China might never democratize, and what ...