May, 2019

• 13 May

  Disney reassures investors streaming won’t break bank

  

  Bloomberg Walt Disney Co.’s quest to become a digital-streaming giant will be an expensive endeavour, but the company can handle it. That’s the message of its latest earnings report, which exceeded Wall Street estimates and sent the shares up as much as 2.4% in late trading. Though profit fell 13% in the fiscal second quarter, that was better than what ...

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• 13 May

  Vote-buying claim, machine glitches mar Philippines vote

  

  Bloomberg Malfunctioning machines and hundreds of arrests for suspected vote buying are disrupting the Philippines’ midterm elections, with polling down to its final hour. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is poised for a majority win in both houses of Congress, even with slowing economic growth and controversial policies including a deadly drug war. Over 18,000 government positions are up for grabs ...

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• 13 May

  Amnesty asks US to press Vietnam on rights amid arrests

  

  Bloomberg Vietnam is increasingly jailing “prisoners of conscience” for comments made on social media platforms such as Facebook Inc, Amnesty International said, urging the US to challenge the government over the growing arrests during talks this week. The number of imprisoned activists has increased to 128 from 97 last year as the government implements a new controversial cyber security law, ...

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• 13 May

  France mulls ‘probe’ on Le Pen, Bannon ties

  Bloomberg France’s parliament has been asked to open a probe into far-right political leader Marine Le Pen’s ties to Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former adviser, and the potential access to top civil servants her party may have helped him get. The two chambers’ presidents will weigh the request by some lawmakers to investigate Le Pen for potential “collusion with ...

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• 13 May

  Pompeo skips Moscow, meets EU allies on Iran

  

  Bloomberg US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo made a surprise visit to Brussels on Monday just as European Union foreign ministers are meeting to discuss ways to salvage the landmark Iran nuclear accord that Washington has abandoned. Pompeo scrapped plans for a brief trip to Moscow and landed in the Belgian capital as his 28 EU counterparts gather. President Donald ...

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• 13 May

  Lithuania cabinet doomed as PM loses presidential ballot

  Bloomberg Lithuania’s prime minister said he’d quit and fold up his minority government after he was knocked out of the euro-area member’s presidential election. In a result that shook the Baltic state’s political landscape and may lead to a snap parliamentary ballot, the former chief economist of SEB Bank AB and a crisis-era finance minister overcame anti-elite rhetoric similar to ...

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• 13 May

  May aims new EU Brexit talks to win Corbyn’s support

  

  Bloomberg Theresa May is promising to reopen Brexit talks with the European Union to try to breathe life back into negotiations with the opposition Labour Party and take the UK out of the bloc by the summer. The prime minister’s office said the government will explore with the EU this week how to rewrite the outline political agreement on future ...

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• 13 May

  Single-payer health-care system is no panacea

  

  The popular appeal of a single-payer system to solve the nation’s health care problems is no secret. Everyone would have insurance, recognising — as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., continually tells us — that health care is “a right, not a privilege.” Our medical expenses would be paid by some central agency, eliminating the wasteful overhead of today’s insurance companies that ...

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• 13 May

  Italy limbers up for its big fight

  

  If you thought the fight between Italy and the European Commission was over, think again. Brussels produced its latest batch of forecasts for EU countries. For Rome, they paint an ugly picture. Italy is expected to grow by a meager 0.1% this year, the slowest pace in the bloc. Meanwhile, its budget deficit is forecast to reach 2.5% of gross ...

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• 13 May

  GE investors are ready to put away their pitchforks

  General Electric Co.’s attempts at a revival are starting to bear fruit – not necessarily in its cash flow, but in its culture and in the hearts and minds of shareholders who’ve had to slog with the industrial giant through some of the worst years in its history. They are ready to believe again. GE hosted its annual meeting in ...

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