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BLOOMBERG Russia targeted Ukrainian cities with cruise missiles in the early hours on Monday that Ukraine’s army chief said were mostly intercepted. At least 34 people were reported hurt by a missile strike in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region. The barrage of attacks comes as Ukraine prepares for another ground offensive against Russian forces. Ukraine pushed back Russian troops from some ...

MEXICO CITY / WAM At least 18 people were killed and 33 injured when a bus fell off a cliff in western Mexico, Reuters said. The prosecutor’s office in Nayarit, the state where the accident occurred, said the vehicle fell some 15 metres (49.21 feet) down a ravine on a highway connecting the state capital Tepic and the tourist destination ...

BLOOMBERG Santiago Pena, a former finance minister, scored a major victory in Paraguay’s presidential election, as voters gave the ruling Colorado Party a third straight mandate to run the South American country. Pena, 44, had 43 percent of the vote with more than 98 percent of voting stations counted, according to preliminary results from the electoral court. His main challenger, ...

BLOOMBERG China’s manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted in April, a sign the economic recovery remains patchy and may be struggling to sustain momentum. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 49.2 from 51.9 in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. The gauge dropped below the level of 50 — which signals contraction from the previous month — ...

BLOOMBERG Singapore should avoid an outright contraction in its economy this year, despite being battered by the effects of a global slowdown, the city state’s prime minister said. While the city-state’s economic growth will slow, inflation may moderate in the second half of this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in an e-mailed speech. The Monetary Authority of Singapore ...

BLOOMBERG Pakistan said inflation in April was expected to accelerate to a record after increases in food and energy prices and a depreciation in the currency. Price gains may be in a range of 36%-38% year-on-year, from 34.8% in March, the finance ministry said in its monthly Economic Update and Outlook. A slow recovery in damages from last year’s floods ...

BLOOMBERG  UBS Group AG Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sergio Ermotti selected one of the lender’s former executives, Tom Naratil, to be a key member of the new management team, according to a report by NZZ. Naratil will become the group’s chief financial officer (CFO) and lead the integration division that will oversee Credit Suisse merger, the newspaper said. Bloomberg had ...

BLOOMBERG  Goldman Sachs and Bank of America (BofA) pushed back their call for when the next policy change from the Bank of Japan (BOJ) is likely to come, after Governor Kazuo Ueda continued with a largely dovish message at his first policy meeting. Economists at Goldman and BofA now have a base-case forecast for the central bank to adjust its ...

BLOOMBERG  JPMorgan Chase & Co won the bidding to acquire First Republic Bank in an emergency government-led intervention after private rescue efforts failed to fill a hole on the troubled lender’s balance sheet and customers yanked their deposits. JPMorgan will take over First Republic’s assets, including about $173 billion of loans and $30 billion of securities, as well as $92 ...

BLOOMBERG The biggest swings in bonds in more than a decade this year are a fresh challenge to the time-honoured 60/40 investment strategy. Holding 60% of portfolios in stocks and 40% in bonds, revered as reliable for decades, fell 17% last year, the worst performance since 2008. While it’s unlikely such a dismal result will be repeated this year, some ...