Masonry Layout

  New Delhi / Bloomberg India’s parliament passed a bill to overhaul archaic bankruptcy laws, taking Prime Minister Narendra Modi a step closer to fulfilling his pledge to make it easier to do business in the world’s fastest growing major economy. The upper house approved the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act days after it was cleared in the lower house. The ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England cut its growth forecasts and issued its strongest warning yet that a vote to leave the European Union would hurt the economy. With just six weeks to go until Britain’s referendum, the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mark Carney, said there were more signs it was weighing on growth and clouding the ...

  Bloomberg Ioannis Plotas doesn’t share his prime minister’s belief that the start of debt-relief discussions on Monday is a step forward for Greece. Rather, the 52-year-old is worried that the latest hikes in income tax and social security contributions passed by Greek lawmakers on Sunday to appease creditors will drive the dry cleaning shop he runs with his sister ...

  Bloomberg For Janet Yellen’s Fed, 2016 is beginning to look all too familiar — another saga of disappointment and downgrade. Last year, Federal Reserve officials started off signaling two interest-rate increases but those plans didn’t work out: Weak first-quarter U.S. growth delayed action in June, international concerns took September off the table and liftoff finally happened in December. This ...

  BRASILIA / AFP Brazil’s Senate voted on Thursday to impeach President Dilma Rousseff after a months-long fight that laid raw the country’s fury over corruption and economic decay, hurling Latin America’s largest country into political turmoil just months before it hosts the Summer Olympics. Rousseff’s enraged backers called the move a coup d’etat and threatened wide-scale protests and strikes. Her ...

  Dubai / WAM HH Sheikh Mansour bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai International Marine Club (DIMC) has honoured the top performers in the fourth ‘Consumer Friendliness Index’ of the Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai at a special ceremony held on Wednesday. Retailers from seven sectors were honoured along with LuLu Hypermarket and Alshaya Group, ...

  KATHMANDU / WAM Bidhya Devi Bhandari, President of Nepal, received HH Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. During the meeting, Sheikh Abdullah conveyed the regards of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to the President of Nepal, wishing her good health and happiness, and more ...

  Tokyo / AFP Toyota on Wednesday warned that its annual net profit will fall by about a third as a stronger yen, and a slowdown in Chinese growth and other emerging markets dent its bottom line. The surprise new forecast — which would mark Toyota’s first profit decline in five years — tipped a 1.5 trillion yen ($13.8 billion) ...

  Brasília / AFP Brazil’s Senate on Wednesday launched a pivotal debate on the future of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces likely suspension and an impeachment trial that could end 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America’s biggest country. Even allies of Rousseff, 68, said she had no chance of surviving the vote, expected later in the day after ...

  London / AFP Queen Elizabeth II was caught on camera describing some Chinese officials as “very rude” in a rare diplomatic gaffe by the long-serving British monarch over a state visit that drummed up billions in Chinese investment. Her comments, aired on Wednesday, came just hours after Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday also made inadvertently public remarks, referring ...