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  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. announced a pay increase for hourly workers in the US that it says will take average starting wage for most front-line employees in warehousing and transportation to more than $19 an hour. The company’s minimum level of $15 an hour for all hourly workers in the US remains unchanged. For jobs in Amazon’s customer fulfilment and ...

Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc said it’s ready to redeploy aircraft from Britain to more vibrant markets if the pound’s collapse, soaring inflation and higher interest rates begin to undermine travel demand there. The economic situation in Ryanair’s biggest market has become challenging following the turmoil unleashed by Prime Minister Liz Truss’s new fiscal policy, with concerns about the impact of ...

Bloomberg Next Plc issued its second profit warning this year due to soaring inflation and a devaluation of the pound which has undermined consumer confidence. The British clothing and housewares chain said that profit for the year will total £840 million ($905 million), compared with previous guidance of £860 million. Full-price sales in the second half are expected to drop ...

  Bloomberg A Hermes handbag fetched a record price for a Sotheby’s auction, latest evidence that rare luxury items are increasingly seen as stores of value by investors and wealthy buyers. The Himalaya Retourne Kelly 25 bag sold for €352,800 ($346,802) in a Paris auction, Sotheby’s said. The crocodile-skin handbag in mother-of-pearl white, reminiscent of a snowy mountain landscape, sold ...

  Bloomberg The crash in the value of sterling has put Rolex and other luxury watches at discounts of as much as 19% for US visitors lucky enough to get their hands on the coveted timepieces. Promised policy changes by the new UK government including a plan to reintroduce Value Added Tax rebates on goods bought by tourists could even ...

Bloomberg Vladimir Putin vowed his annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine is irreversible, as the Russian president formalized Europe’s biggest land grab since World War II and accused the West of trying to subjugate his country. “They will become our citizens forever,” he told officials in a Kremlin ceremony Friday before he and Moscow-installed leaders signed annexation documents. He ...

Bloomberg A suicide bomber attacked an educational center in Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least 19 students who were appearing in a mock university entrance examination. The death toll could rise in Dasht-e-Barchi as the attacker, disguised as a student, has also injured 27 teenagers, Khalid Zadran, a spokesman for the Kabul police, said by phone. The victims were aged ...

  Bloomberg Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Russia’s jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny top the shortlist for potential winners of this year’s Nobel Peace prize, the Peace Research Institute Oslo said in annual predictions. “Both Tsikhanouskaya and Navalny are vocal critics of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” according to a statement in Oslo on Friday. “A shared Nobel Peace ...

Bloomberg Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and leftist challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traded insults in a televised debate that marked their final face off before Sunday’s election, with polls giving the opposition leader a wide lead. The men went on the attack from the get-go, with Bolsonaro calling Lula a “liar,” “ex-convict” and “gang leader.” The comments drew a ...

  Bloomberg Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha will remain in office after the highest court ruled he hadn’t breached a constitutional term limit, handing him a victory as political jockeying increases ahead of elections that must be called by March. The nine-member Constitutional Court said Friday the eight-year term limit can’t be imposed retroactively on Prayuth, who first took office ...