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  Sydney / AFP Qantas plans to operate non-stop flights from Perth to London, the world’s first regular passenger service linking Australia directly to Europe in a move hailed by tourism groups. The airline will use a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner for the 17-hour journey, some 70 years after it first began flying to London on its “Kangaroo Route” which originally ...

  Bloomberg JetSmarter, which operates an Uber-like network that connects travelers to empty seats on chartered planes, raised $105 million in its latest funding round, indicating that the startup has managed to make the concept work where others have failed. The company, which currently offers about 50 routes between more than 30 cities around the world, plans to use the ...

  Bloomberg Russia’s biggest bank is paying up to keep the nation’s best tech talent from emigrating to Silicon Valley. To analyze 135 million customers, it needs the power of big data. Sberbank PJSC, which holds 46 percent of Russian retail deposits, says it’s luring experts in the field with some of the highest salaries at the state-owned lender, paying ...

  Washington / AFP US banking regulators said they are prohibiting Wells Fargo from opening new international branches until it fixes continuing deficiencies in its bankruptcy plan. The so-called ‘living will’ is required of all large US banks to ensure that in the event they need to declare bankruptcy, they can be dismantled in an orderly fashion without the kind ...

  Manama / Reuters The 23rd annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) recognized excellence within the Islamic finance and banking industry at a high profile Gala Dinner at the beautiful ART Rotana Hotel, Amwaj Islands in Bahrain. WIBC Performance Awards were granted to the top Islamic financial institutions based purely on their performance at the global, regional and national levels. ...

  Shanghai / AFP Chinese bank lending grew modestly month-on-month in November, official data showed on Wednesday, after being almost halved in October, the latest indication that the country’s economy may be stabilising. New loans extended by banks rose to 794.6 billion yuan ($115.1 billion) last month, compared with 651.3 billion yuan in October, said the People’s Bank of China ...

  Bloomberg Central Bank of Kenya officials were allegedly at the heart of fraud at the failed Imperial Bank Ltd., described by one analyst as perhaps the industry’s largest scandal in the East African nation. Imperial Bank staff for years gave central bank officials loans and even school fees in exchange for helping to hide unauthorized debt, according to a ...

  Abidjan / AFP A mother from a working-class district of Abidjan watches fearfully while the physiotherapist presses down on the thorax and abdomen of her crying, struggling baby to help him breathe. Under the health worker’s expert hands, the infant gradually expels the secretions clogging up his lungs through his nose and mouth. His mother looks astonished and the ...

  Gulf of Thailand / AFP Piercing the water’s surface with its almond-shaped mouth, a giant Bryde’s whale opens wide for one, two, three seconds, gulping in anchovies as a boatload of awed tourist look on in the Gulf of Thailand. It’s a rare glimpse of marine life in its natural habitat, in a kingdom overrun with mass tourist attractions ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP Uber is bringing a small number of self-driving cars to its ride-hailing service in San Francisco — a move likely to excite the city’s tech-savvy population and certain to antagonize California regulators. The Wednesday launch in Uber’s hometown expands a public pilot program the company started in Pittsburgh in September. The testing lets everyday people ...