TRENTON, NJ / AP Cardboard boxes certainly aren’t new technology. But when they’re linked to a practice that started in Finland decades ago to help babies sleep safely, they’re taking on a new purpose as so-called baby boxes make their way to the U.S. Parents are beginning to take baby boxes home from hospitals along with their newborns. A ...

  Bloomberg A potent blend of pride, economic nationalism and mounting concern over water security have the world’s two biggest cola brands in a bind in southern India. Shopkeepers in drought-hit Kerala state decided to promote local brands over Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. beverages after counterparts in neighboring Tamil Nadu boycotted the multinational drinks. While retail groups claim the ...

  Bloomberg First it was Japan’s steelmakers, now it’s the nation’s power producers that are set to pay for China’s coal policies. Japanese utilities may pay at least 29 percent more for annual supplies this year after China’s efforts in 2016 to trim overcapacity led to a more than doubling of spot prices, according to UBS Group AG and Morgan ...

  Bloomberg China introduced a new indicator for the services sector to better track the vast range of activity from movies to restaurants that now account for more than half of the economy. The services output index rose 8.2 percent in January and February from a year earlier on growth in technology, transportation, and deliveries, the National Bureau of the ...

  Bloomberg Dutch voters turned out in force to back pro-European parties and help Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Liberals easily beat off an election challenge by the anti-Islam Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, drawing a line in the sand over the spread of populism. With votes counted in all but one of the country’s 388 municipalities, the Liberal Party had ...

  YANGON/ AP A commission chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended that the government allow aid workers and journalists free access to an area in western Myanmar where security forces are accused of major human rights abuses against the Muslim Rohingya minority. Annan spoke on Thursday in a video shown at a news conference in Yangon, where ...

  JERUSALEM / AP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to keep his promise to build Israel’s first new West Bank settlement in two decades — even as Netanyahu and President Trump’s envoy continue discussions on future settlement building. Netanyahu will meet with Trump envoy Jason Greenblatt on Thursday as part of efforts to reach an “agreed-upon policy” on ...

  LONDON / AP A bill authorizing Britain to start its exit from the European Union received royal assent and became law on Thursday, empowering Prime Minister Theresa May to begin divorce proceedings from the bloc. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow announced that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act has received the assent of Queen Elizabeth II. The ...

  GREENBELT / AP President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban has suffered another federal court setback after a judge in Maryland rejected a revised measure that bans travel targeting six predominantly Muslim countries. Judge Theodore Chuang ruled on Thursday in a case brought near the nation’s capital by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups representing immigrants, refugees and ...

  MANILA / AP Australia urged Southeast Asian nations and China to conclude a legally binding code of conduct in the South China Sea as soon as possible, voicing concern on Thursday about the scale of reclamation and construction by China in the disputed territory. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, speaking in Manila, urged the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian ...