India’s Ambani needs $2b to save last bastion

Bloomberg The last stronghold in embattled businessman Anil Ambani’s phone carrier-to-power empire is also developing fault lines. Reliance Capital Ltd, his financial services business that almost doubled its profit in five years, had largely remained insulated from the distress plaguing the wider conglomerate. Now, the company that controls India’s fifth-biggest mutual fund, is racing to close a planned $2 billion ...

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Jho Low’s empty $39mn Los Angeles mansion to be sold

Bloomberg US prosecutors and representatives of fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho want to sell a $39 million mansion in Los Angeles he bought in 2012 with money allegedly stolen from the state-owned 1MDB investment fund. The empty mansion above the trendy Sunset Strip is falling into further disrepair by the day and is costing $690,000 a year in taxes, ...

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SoftBank considers IPO for $100bn Vision Fund

Bloomberg A handful of executives at SoftBank Group Corp are weighing the idea of an initial public offering for its Vision Fund, the $100 billion behemoth that has invested in technology companies ranging from Uber Technologies Inc to WeWork Cos. The idea is early stage, said a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because it ...

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10m North Koreans face food shortages

Bloomberg About 10 million North Koreans — 40 percent of the population — are in urgent need of food assistance after heat and drought crippled last year’s harvest, according to the UN. The country collected about 4.9 million tonnes of food crops last year, the least in a decade, after a prolonged dry spell and limited agricultural inputs cut yields, ...

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World’s top internet user taps fake news busters for polls

Bloomberg In the Philippines — where 76 million internet users stay online the longest in the world — just a handful of people spend a few hours each day to fight fake news about the upcoming midterm elections. The Commission on Elections has formed a team of 10 government workers to spot and report misleading online posts to Facebook, with ...

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Trump confident N Korea’s Kim won’t break promise

Bloomberg President Donald Trump brushed off news of a possible weapons test by North Korea, vowing that leader Kim Jong-un “will do nothing to interfere” and that a denuclearisation deal with the US “will happen.” Saturday’s tweet, posted while Trump was in a motorcade to the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, was the president’s first response to news that ...

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Gaza fires rockets as Israel kills 4 Palestinians

Bloomberg Almost 150 rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, with Israel returning the strikes, its military said. The flare-up marked the latest escalation between the two sides. Gaza’s barrage followed the killing of four Palestinians by Israel. Two of those who died were Hamas extremists killed in an airstrike and two were demonstrators taking part ...

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Putin not ‘involved’ in Venezuela, says Trump

Bloomberg Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t seeking to “get involved” in the crisis in Venezuela, despite assertions by the American president’s top national security advisers that the Kremlin is offering critical support to Nicolas Maduro’s regime. “He is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen ...

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Cyclone wreaks havoc as India, B’desh evacuate millions

Bloomberg Cyclone Fani barreled through the eastern parts of India on May 3, unleashing heavy rain and prompting authorities in the country and neighbouring Bangladesh to evacuate a total of more than 3.5 million people to shelters. At least 12 people were killed as the storm swamped towns and villages, the Press Trust of India reported, citing government officials it ...

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Voters punish May, Corbyn in local polls

Bloomberg Voters in England punished both Theresa May’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition in local elections, piling pressure on the two party leaders to resolve the Brexit crisis paralysing British politics. Britain’s major parties interpreted their poor results as an angry demand from a frustrated population to deal with Brexit, which has locked Parliament in a stalemate for months. ...

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