Verizon, AT&T rein in location-data sellers after flap

Bloomberg Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. will rein in third-party selling of their phone-location data after a prison contractor let law-enforcement officers track wireless customers without authorisation. The two largest US wireless carrier announced the move in response to a plea from Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. The legislator had demanded last month that carriers and the ...

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IHeart open to takeover talks after rebuffing Liberty offer

Bloomberg IHeartMedia Inc, the biggest US radio broadcaster, formally turned down a $1.16 billion bid from John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp., but other talks are continuing as the company navigates its way through bankruptcy. Liberty officially withdrew its bid June 15 after being informed that its offer for a 40 percent stake wasn’t enough to satisfy the company or its ...

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Canada’s economy wobbles but rate hikes still expected

Bloomberg Canada’s economy is stuck in a soft patch, but analysts remain optimistic a rebound and further interest-rate hikes are still in the cards. Data over last month reveal an economy struggling to find its footing and hobbled by headwinds ranging from trade frictions with the US to a slowing housing market and poor weat-her. Still, economists remain convinced that ...

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Greece won’t really be leaving its bailout

In a way, the debt relief deal Greece has received as it exits its bailout makes good sense: It keeps the country on a tight leash, all but eliminating the possibility that it will go on a borrowing spree in the financial markets and misspend the money as it’s done before. On the other hand, the scheme gets superimposed uncomfortably ...

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A trade ‘talk’ with Trump can hurt

The US is waging a trade ‘discussion,’ not a war — that’s how Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, put it earlier this month after his administration hit the European Union (and other allies) with tariffs on steel and aluminum. The direct impact was seen by some as minimal, given these exports account for 0.05 percent of the bloc’s ...

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GE’s Dow eviction is a form of intervention

John Flannery has one less reason to keep General Electric Co. together. The 126-year-old company and last original member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average was dropped from the index last week and will be replaced with drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. GE’s place on the benchmark index had been an open question for some time now as a ...

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The Fed needs to pass its own stress test

The largest US banks have just cleared the first hurdle of this year’s Federal Reserve stress tests, demonstrating that they have enough loss-absorbing capital to survive a hypothetical crisis. Now, investors are waiting to hear how much of that capital the banks will be allowed to pay out in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. They should be careful ...

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Plenty of people want to fight Trump’s trade war

US President Donald Trump rode to power declaring that China had twisted the world trading system out of shape — and plenty of people around the world murmured in agreement, if very quietly. The first shots in Trump’s trade war, however, have been indiscriminate. His steel and aluminium tariffs are the equivalent of firing into a curious crowd of onlookers. ...

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Dislike! Sustainable fund says dump FB

No responsible investor should own Facebook Inc. shares, according to the head of sustainable investing at the biggest bank in the Nordic region. That’s an unjustifiable overreaction. Sasja Beslik, who runs Nordea Bank AB’s sustainable finance unit, made the call to divest this week after Cambridge Analytica used data from as many as 87 million users of the social network ...

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Brexit politics stymies UK healthcare debate

UK Prime Minister Theresa May recently announced that the country’s crisis-ridden National Health Service (NHS) will receive an additional 20 billion pounds at today’s exchange rate by 2023. In normal times, that sort of decision might have followed a public discussion of how much the nation should spend on health care and where the money should come from. But this ...

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