The Republicans won’t stop harping about President Barack Obama’s handling of the Louisiana floods. Their media focus until this week was to talk exclusively about whether he would break into his August vacation and tour the damage. When he got there, of course, it was (for them) too little, too late. What has been noteworthy about this coverage is ...

  Once upon a time, a regular hacker could make decent money in the world of ransomware, malicious software that locks up parts of a victim’s computer and demands payment to restore access. Now those days are gone. I blame globalization. Ransomware has only recently entered the public consciousness, thanks to the high-profile extortion of a Los Angeles hospital and ...

  New York / Bloomberg U.S. stocks fluctuated amid a batch earnings after erasing an early decline, while investors awaited clues on the path of interest-rate increases before a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Friday. HP Inc. sank 4.9 percent after forecasting earnings that may miss analyst projections. Signet Jewelers Ltd. dropped 14 percent as its profit ...

Dubai / Reuters Gulf stock markets extended losses in early trade on Thursday with banks leading Saudi Arabia down, as investors continued to pull out of equities over concerns about the region’s economic slowdown and policies of austerity. The Saudi index, which on Wednesday fell below minor technical support on the April low of 6,066 points, sank a further 1.4 ...

  Bloomberg Oil traded near the lowest close in a week as U.S. crude stockpiles unexpectedly increased, keeping supplies at the highest in at least three decades with the peak summer demand period approaching its end. Futures were little changed in New York after falling 2.8 percent on Wednesday. Inventories rose by 2.5 million barrels last week, according to the ...

Riga /AFP Two Scandinavian banks, Nordea and DNB, announced on Thursday they will merge operations in Baltic eurozone members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Their new bank will be the second-largest financial institution in the region behind market-leader Swedbank, with assets worth 13 billion euros ($14.6 billion) and more than 3,000 employees. “Nordea and DNB have entered into an agreement to ...

  Bloomberg Shares of Kenya’s biggest banks plunged after President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a law that caps the interest rates lenders can charge on loans and set minimum payments on deposits. KCB Group Ltd., the nation’s largest bank by assets, led the slump to head for the steepest decline in 13 years after Kenyatta signed the law saying he sympathized ...

  Bloomberg Malayan Banking Bhd. posted a third straight decline in quarterly profit as the biggest Malaysian lender more than tripled allowances for loan impairments. Net income fell to 1.16 billion ringgit ($288 million) in the three months through June from 1.58 billion ringgit a year earlier, the Kuala Lumpur-based company said in a stock exchange filing on Thursday. Revenue ...

  Lisbon /AFP The European Commission and Portugal said they have agreed on a 5-billion-euro deal to recapitalise the state-owned Caixa Geral de Depositos (CGD) bank, including through a 2.7-billion-euro injection of state funds. The deal was provisionally approved by European Union competition chief Margrethe Vestager to meet the 28-nation bloc’s tough rules on preventing unfair government aid for businesses. ...

  Bloomberg China’s central bank watchers have something new to puzzle over. The People’s Bank of China sold 50 billion yuan ($7.5 billion) of 14-day reverse-repurchase agreements on Wednesday, its first offering of anything with a tenor other than seven days since February. Officials are signaling they’re ready to curb leverage in the bond market by making it less profitable ...