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  Bloomberg President Donald Trump has pledged to reverse what he describes as “astronomical” drug prices in the US Thousands of miles away, Japan, long a profit sanctuary for multinational pharmaceutical companies, is taking a similar tack. About $93 billion is spent annually on medications in Japan, and the government plays a key role on prices because it covers about ...

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s timetable to negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement threatens to slip into an election year for Mexico, which could feel the economic impact of the uncertainty especially if the agreement starts disintegrating. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that the trade talks will probably begin in the latter part of 2017 and shouldn’t last ...

  Bloomberg Akzo Nobel NV, Europe’s largest coatings company, rejected an unsolicited 20.9 billion-euro ($22.1 billion) takeover bid from rival PPG Industries Inc. and said it may separate its specialty chemicals business to boost the stock price. PPG’s bid, worth 83 euros a share at the end of February, substantially undervalued the company, Amsterdam-based Akzo said in a state- ment ...

  Bloomberg BMW AG reported its weakest profitability since 2010, capping a negative year for Chief Executive Officer Harald Krueger after losing the luxury-car crown to arch-rival Mercedes-Benz. Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9 percent in 2016 from 9.2 percent a year earlier, according to a statement on Thursday. The shares ...

  Bloomberg Aviva Plc, Britain’s second-largest insurer, raised its dividend and said it will return more cash to shareholders this year after higher earnings at the life insurance unit helped boost full-year operating profit. The shares rose the most in seven months. Operating profit climbed 12 percent to 3.01 billion pounds ($3.66 billion) from a year earlier and Aviva raised ...

  NEW YORK / AP These days, it’s possible to use your phone and sometimes just your voice to control everything from your TV to your lights, your thermostat and shades, even your car or medical device. (At least, once you have gadgets that can listen.) But the WikiLeaks allegation that the CIA commandeered some Samsung smart TVs as listening ...

  Bloomberg Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd. is teaming with Britain’s Dialog Semiconductor Plc. to develop smartphone chips, a deal that will help the government-linked Chinese technology giant expand its growing semiconductor empire. Unigroup mobile-design subsidiary Spreadtrum & RDA and the British supplier of chips to Apple Inc.’s iPhones and iPads are considering a joint venture in eastern China, through which the ...

  Bloomberg On a rooftop in the Jewish-Arab Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa, a former military technologist and an ex-journalist sit in a transparent bio-dome where their robot is busy learning how to grow food. Flux IoT’s Eddy, a robot measuring less than a foot tall and resembling a life buoy, is built with military-grade sensors and armed with image-processing ...

  ROME / AP Lucia Annibali’s face was rebuilt for the price of atrocious pain and 18 surgeries after an acid attack ordered by her ex-boyfriend corroded her eyelids, cheeks and forehead almost to the bone and left her nearly blind. The man she enraged with a breakup, like her then a lawyer in an Adriatic resort town, is now ...

  NEW YORK / AP Daniel Houghton was just 24 years old when he became CEO of Lonely Planet in 2013. Since then, he’s restructured the company, expanded its digital presence and, to the surprise of many who feared he’d kill off Lonely Planet guidebooks, he’s grown the print side of the business. The company now has 33 percent of ...