Recession brings despair in China’s rustbelt

  Bloomberg The long-feared Chinese hard landing has become a reality in rustbelt Liaoning. The northeastern province, ground zero in China’s multi- year slowdown, saw its economy contract 1 percent in the first half of 2016 as factories splutter and the coal industry groans under the weight of overcapacity. But the hardship remains localized, with regional data for the first ...

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Indian stocks retreat for 4th day

  Bloomberg Indian stocks dropped the most in a month amid losses in emerging-market equities and as investors turned cautious before lawmakers began debating the unified sales tax bill. The S&P BSE Sensex tumbled 1 percent at the close in a fourth day of losses, the longest losing run in seven weeks. A gauge of mid-cap stocks had its steepest ...

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It’s Deja Vu in Japanese markets as Abe leaves investors cold

Bloomberg Not for the first time, a long-awaited plan by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has fallen flat with investors. The Topix slumped 1.6 percent on Tuesday after Abe returned to the fiscal-stimulus lever with a 28 trillion yen ($277 billion) spending-and-lending package to sooth concern that his Abenomics program isn’t working. It dropped another 2.2 percent on Wednesday. The ...

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China to loosen curbs on stock exchange pacts

  Bloomberg China’s futures exchange is planning to relax the restrictions on stock-index contracts that sparked a 99 percent plunge in trading and heightened concern over the government’s intervention in markets, according to people familiar with the matter. The bourse is considering allowing non-hedging accounts to open 100 new positions a day on a single contract, the people said. Currently, ...

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Air Force calls Lockheed’s jet ready for limited combat

  Bloomberg The US Air Force declared its version of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 ready if needed for limited combat operations, a milestone for the $379 billion program that’s the Pentagon’s costliest. The service’s announcement that the combat jet has an “initial operational capability” reflects progress after early years marked by development setbacks and rising costs. But the F-35 is ...

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Money-for-parents policy has top Polish retailer on job hunt

  Bloomberg The roll-out of the Polish government’s flagship welfare program hit the country’s biggest retailer with a bittersweet result last quarter, lifting sales while also pressuring it to raise wages as it struggles to hire new workers. Sales at Portugal’s Jeronimo Martins SGPS SA’s Polish Biedronka supermarket chain jumped 10.2 percent in April to June from a year earlier ...

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Australia hopes new wing part could reveal MH370 clues

  AFP Australian MH370 search authorities are hopeful a wing part found in Tanzania will shed light on how the flight crashed, amid a lack of public information on debris found a year ago. As the underwater hunt far off Australia’s west coast draws to a close without any sign of the plane, there has been speculation the flight’s final ...

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Balloon pilot kept job despite ‘alcohol-related’ conviction

  AP If Alfred “Skip” Nichols had been a commercial airplane pilot, he probably would have been grounded long ago. Nichols, the pilot of a hot air balloon that crashed over the weekend in Texas, killing 16, was able to keep flying despite having at least four convictions for drunken driving and twice spending time in prison — pointing to ...

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Canadian economy fail to shake reliance on housing

  Bloomberg Canada is in the midst of one of its weakest expansions ever, and only the housing boom keeps it from getting worse. That’s one of the key takeaways from Friday’s GDP report. Two years since oil prices started plunging, Canada’s economy is almost completely reliant for growth on bank lending and the hot Vancouver and Toronto housing markets. ...

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Rising sea levels could cost US homeowners close to $1 trillion

  Bloomberg When talking about housing, “underwater” usually means you owe more on a mortgage than the home is actually worth. If climate change continues apace, that term could take on a much more literal meaning. Rising sea levels could soak homeowners for $882 billion, according to a new report from real estate website Zillow. The research takes its initial ...

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