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Bloomberg India, the world’s biggest consumer of gold after China, increased the import tax on the precious metal for the first time since 2013, spurring domestic prices to a record. Shares of jewellers slumped. The import tax on gold and other precious metals will be raised to 12.5 percent from 10 percent, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while presenting the ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s struggling tourism industry is finding support with visitors from the population colossus to its west, just as the years of bumper arrivals from the giant to its north are beginning to wane. At a beachfront hotel on the tropical island of Phuket, the occupancy rate from Chinese clientele has stalled, while bookings from India have begun to rise. ...

Bloomberg Trade tensions and uncertainty surrounding Brexit are raising economic risks for the euro area, prompting France to urge Germany to loosen its purse strings to support growth. “It would be irresponsible not to examine the need for new investments in the euro zone,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said at an annual economic conference in Aix-en-Provence, in southern ...

Bloomberg Orange SA Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard will have to resign if he’s convicted next week on decade-old allegations of fraud, a top finance ministry official said. A Paris court will decide on July 9 whether Richard helped businessman Bernard Tapie cheat the government out of about 403 million euros ($455 million) in 2008, when he was chief of ...

Bloomberg The blistering heatwave that struck Germany and other parts of Europe last month shows the country needs to take further action to protect the environment, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast. “Extreme weather events are becoming more common,” Merkel said. “Together we must react to the situation.” The increased use of renewable energy, along with efforts to ...

Bloomberg Starbucks Corp issued an apology to Tempe, Arizona Police Chief Sylvia Moir and her department after six officers were asked to leave a store in the city following a request by a customer on July 4. The barista approached the officers as a customer didn’t feel safe in their presence, the Tempe Officers Association said in a series of ...

Bloomberg Apple’s Steve Jobs was singular in his ability to take a company “on a path to die” and turn it into the world’s most valuable — in part by “casting spells,” billionaire Bill Gates said. Gates spoke of Jobs, the Apple Inc co-founder and chief executive officer who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, in a segment on leadership ...

Bloomberg Iran said it would pursue nuclear talks with European nations in the coming days, while ratcheting up pressure on its partners to salvage the landmark 2015 deal by announcing it had abandoned restrictions on uranium enrichment. Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country hasn’t closed the diplomatic pathway with Europe, and that the US could join talks if ...

Bloomberg Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the US, described President Donald Trump as “inept” and “incompetent” in diplomatic memos to his bosses at the UK Foreign Office, the Mail on Sunday reported. The newspaper reported that Darroch used cables and briefing notes to comment on Trump and those who surround him. Trump’s White House was “uniquely dysfunctional” and given ...

Bloomberg The top US diplomat on North Korea heads to Europe for talks on removing nuclear weapons from the Asian peninsula, the State Department said, a week after an impromptu meeting between Donald Trump and the North’s Kim Jongun. US Special Representative Stephen Biegun will be in Brussels and then Berlin through Thursday to meet Lee Do-hoon, South Korea’s special ...