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Pipeline backers make big promises about jobs, growth

  DALLAS / AP TransCanada has quickly filed a new application to build Keystone XL, one of two big oil pipelines being given a second chance by President Donald Trump. Former President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL in 2015. The Army halted construction of the Dakota Access pipeline last month. The move by Trump fulfills a campaign promise to ...

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Feb budget ‘critical’ for India amid cash ban

  Bloomberg Three months into a cash ban that has sucked out momentum from one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has little room to boost spending. While economists urge more investment in roads, ports and railways when the government presents its budget February 1, and maybe even direct cash transfers to boost consumption, a splurge carries ...

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N Korea restarts Yongbyon Plutonium nuclear reactor

  Bloomberg North Korea’s 5 megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon is showing a water plume, indicating that the plant is probably operating at the facility, a US research institute said. The facility, which had suspended operations in late 2015, is capable of producing enough plutonium to assemble one atomic bomb every year. Satellite pictures taken Jan. 22 show emissions from ...

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Demand for tires in China makes gloves dear

  Bloomberg Consumers across the globe donning gloves to do the dishes may soon feel the heat from rubber being burned on China’s roads. Surging car sales in China in the last few months have more than doubled the price of a little-known chemical called butadiene. The colorless gas, used for making synthetic rubber, has soared in tandem with rising ...

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China home prices surge in 11 months amid curbs

  Bloomberg China home prices increased last month in the fewest cities since January last year, signaling property curbs to deflate a potential housing bubble are taking effect. New-home prices, excluding government-subsidized housing, gained last month in 46 of the 70 cities tracked by the government, compared with 55 in November, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Prices dropped in ...

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Weaknesses of Trump’s wrecking-ball approach

  President Trump’s slash-and-burn actions in his first week have been dramatic, but dangerously lacking in a consensus of support, even within his own administration. The risks were evident in the collapse of a planned meeting with Mexico’s president and in Trump’s embrace of torture tactics rejected by his secretary of defense and CIA director. Trump’s ‘tweet from the hip’ ...

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India’s best lenders should brace for a new kind of ugly

  Indian bank investors are in for a rude shock, and one that’s got little to do with the chaos unleashed by demonetization. The fault lies in shareholders’ own expectations, which, in Morgan Stanley’s words, are driven by “institutional memory.” The top three Indian private-sector lenders by assets — ICICI Bank Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd. and Axis Bank Ltd. — ...

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Can Trump win friends and influence people?

  With Britain poised to quit the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May needs all the friends she can get. That helps explain her visit to White House, President Donald Trump’s first from a foreign head of state. The question is, what’s in it for him? Like so much else in the Trump era, this rapprochement is both unpredictable and, ...

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Trump travel ban flies in the face of American values

US President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring most citizens from seven mainly Muslim Mideast and East African nations from entering the US. The nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia won’t be able to enter the US for at least 90 days. The order will deny visas to Syrian nationals and halts the processing of ...

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‘Reform’ isn’t the answer for everything today

  Nearly a decade after the global financial crisis, the recovery remains disappointing and nothing — neither massive fiscal stimulus, nor record-low rates, nor generous injections of liquidity by central banks — seems to be helping. Policymakers from Washington to London to Tokyo all seem to agree there’s only one answer left: structural reform. Everywhere there’s talk of amending tax ...

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