Bloomberg Accor SA, Europe’s biggest hotel operator, is expanding its luxury vacation-rental offering with listings in the Hamptons, Wall Street’s summer playground. The Long Island rentals cost as much as $2 million for the season and are the first launches in the Collections portfolio of Accor’s onefinestay unit, according to a company statement. More sites will be added over ...

  Bloomberg Luxury developer Toll Brothers Inc. has a deal for those shopping for a condo in Manhattan: buy something soon, and we’ll pay the taxes on your purchase. The publicly traded homebuilder is offering to pay the city transfer tax and the New York state “mansion tax” — an effective discount totaling almost 2.5 percent — on deals made ...

  Bloomberg A UK energy-storage startup is aiming to take on Tesla Inc. in the competition to outfit homes with affordable back-up battery power. Powervault Ltd. is preparing to boost production of its lead- and lithium-ion batteries, said Managing Director Joe Warren. The London-based company is targeting sales of 50,000 units a year by 2020, up from about 1,000 this ...

  Bloomberg A smart trap for mosquitoes? A new high-tech version is promising to catch the bloodsuckers while letting friendlier insects escape — and even record the exact weather conditions when different species emerge to bite. Whether it really could improve public health is still to be determined. But when the robotic traps were pilot-tested around Houston last summer, they ...

  Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. is trying again in health care, betting its prowess in cloud services and artificial-intelligence can help it expand in a market that’s been notoriously hard for technology companies. A new initiative called Healthcare NExT will combine work from existing industry players and Microsoft’s Research and AI units to help doctors reduce data entry tasks, triage sick ...

  MILWAUKEE / AP “Pokemon Go” monsters can roam virtually wherever they please, but they’ll need a permit to get into Milwaukee County parks. At the height of the game’s popularity last summer, the large crowds it attracted to one Milwaukee park left county officials at a loss for how to deal with the sudden influx of players and the ...

  WASHINGTON / AP Getting through college isn’t easy, and it can be even harder for low-income and first generation students with few support resources. A new tool involving big data can help those at risk. Researchers at Georgia State University spent four years analyzing students’ grades, test scores and other information in order to identify those in potential trouble, ...

WASHINGTON / AP The apparent assassination of the North Korean leader’s estranged half-brother is strengthening bipartisan calls for the US to re-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, a designation lifted nine years ago. Doing so would increase the country’s isolation, while potentially complicating any future diplomacy to halt its nuclear and missile programs. The US kept North ...

  BANJUL / AP Gambia’s new president was set to be inaugurated on Saturday as this tiny West African nation celebrates wider freedoms after a tense political standoff with its former leader. Several heads of state were scheduled to attend the ceremony for President Adama Barrow. He was sworn into office last month at Gambia’s embassy in neighboring Senegal as ...

  MINSK / AP In more than two decades in power, the leader of Belarus has cast his nation as Moscow’s closest ally, securing tens of billions of dollars in Russian subsidies. At the same time, President Alexander Lukashenko has skillfully exploited Russia’s security fears by occasionally reaching out to the West to win concessions from Moscow. Now, the Kremlin ...