US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reinforced a pledge that America and its allies will continue supplying military aid to Ukraine to help it repel Russia’s invasion “for as long as it takes.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier vowed to “liberate” Crimea as speculation swirled about the cause of a major fire at an air base on the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. “This Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea -- its liberation,” Zelenskiy said.

The purchase of the stake by Kohlberg is being done alongside a new group of investors that includes funds managed by

The UK and China have agreed to resume direct passenger flights, a sign that Chinese authorities are slowly loosening their grip on the world’s tightest Covid-19 regime and opening up to travel again. 

Chinese airlines will offer the first flights and work is ongoing to resume routes for UK carriers, the British Embassy in China said in a tweet, confirming an agreement between the UK Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Administration of China. 

Paris (AP) -- A beluga whale that captured French hearts when it showed up in the Seine River had to be euthanized Wednesday after it was successfully removed from the French waterway, authorities said.

A rescue team was preparing to transfer the whale to a saltwater pool in Normandy. The male marine mammal was first spotted in the Seine last week after having accidentally veered off its normal path to the Arctic.

Group net income at the aluminum and copper producer rose to a record 41.2 billion rupees ($518 million) in the three months through June, up 48% from the same quarter last year. That beat analysts’ estimates for a profit of 28.5 billion rupees. Sales climbed 40% from a year earlier to 580.2 billion rupees. 

Liz Truss is likely to give ministers the power to overturn some financial regulators’ decisions if she becomes UK prime minister, a potential move that could set up fresh tensions with the Bank of England. 

Allies of Truss say she favors “call-in” powers to allow the government to block or change the actions of financial regulators, including the central bank’s Prudential Regulatory Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. 

At the height of NFT mania, everyone from athletes like Tom Brady to celebs like Justin Beiber seemed to be buying (or talking about) collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club. Nonfungible tokens aren’t just pictures of monkeys, though — they exist on the blockchain, and buying or selling them typically requires paying in some kind of cryptocurrency, often Ether. While the link between NFT prices and the those of tokens such as Ether or Solana is not always straightforward, it’s true that nonfungible tokens haven’t been entirely spared from the chill of the crypto winter. For more on NFTs, and how and whether they’re holding up these days, Bloomberg reporter Prarthana Prakash joins this episode.

Omny Studio: The NFT Hype - Bloomberg Crypto

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the Cabinet has asked the nation’s anti-graft commission to speed up its investigation into the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) project.

“If there is strong evidence, the state will prosecute and those responsible will be brought to justice,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. The Cabinet also agreed to declassify the 2019 forensic report on the project after securing advice from the attorney-general and auditor general, Ismail said.

Hungary’s biggest refiner said it has paid Russia’s transit fee to Ukraine to resolve a dispute that has led to a halt in oil flows to central Europe.

Mol Nyrt., the oil company that sought to unblock supplies, said Ukraine and Russia have both accepted its decision to step in to settle the transfer fees.

Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee are vowing to pursue legislation mandating more transparency from the Federal Reserve after learning the central bank had documents regarding former Fed nominee Sarah Bloom Raskin that the bank never divulged to Congress.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, 11 GOP members of the committee complained the bank never complied with a February request by ranking Republican Pat Toomey for correspondence about Reserve Trust, a fintech firm that received a Fed master account while Raskin, an ex-Fed governor, served as a company director. 

An index measuring South African business sentiment rose to a four-month high in July as tourism numbers and new vehicle sales increased. 

The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry business confidence index rose to 110.3, from 108.5 in June, and the reference year was adjusted to 2020 to account for the latest trends in the economy and financial markets, the group said Wednesday in an emailed statement. That’s the highest level since March and may signal the business climate is gradually returning to normality, SACCI said. 

China’s economy will face increasing risks if interbank borrowing rates stay too low for too long, a former central-bank official says.

Excessively cheap funding costs may drive more financial institutions into leveraged bond trading, where they borrow more short-term cash to invest in longer-maturity debt, said Sheng Songcheng, previously head of the statistics and analysis department at the People’s Bank of China.

An ally of former Pakistan premier Imran Khan was arrested and a TV channel seen to be close to his party has been pulled off air for allegedly broadcasting “seditious” content against the South Asian country’s powerful army. 

Pakistan’s political risks have remained elevated since Khan was ousted in April through a parliament no-confidence vote. The former leader has continued to accuse Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the Pakistani military of conspiring with the US to remove him from power -- an allegation all three have denied. 

Around 7,000 of Aviva’s lowest-paid employees were told last week they will get a payout of as much as £1,000 ($1,208), Aviva’s chief executive Amanda Blanc said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Wednesday.

Benchmark German power prices rose to a record, with an ongoing heat wave and drought set to severely restrict one of Europe’s key waterways for shipping energy supplies. 

The blistering summer heat is adding stress to Europe’s energy system while Russia limits exports of gas to the continent. That’s set to hit the finances of households and businesses across Europe, a crisis that will only intensify as energy demand rises during winter.

Mumbai-based JSW, controlled by tycoon Sajjan Jindal, will acquire about 1.8 gigawatts of renewable power assets, including 1.3 gigawatts of wind and 422 megawatts of solar, according to a stock exchange

A unit of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund scooped up state-owned stakes in four Egyptian companies for $1.3 billion, the latest influx of Gulf cash for the struggling economy of a country seen as a linchpin in the Arab world.

The Saudi Egyptian Investment Co., a new firm set up by the Public Investment Fund, acquired minority stakes in

Landlocked Uganda increased its fuel buffer to 100 million liters ahead of Kenya elections to avoid potential supply disruptions, as was the case in 2007 when voting-related violence erupted in Kenya, which is a main conduit for its imports.

The East African country built stocks over three months through July sufficient to meet domestic demand for at least 10 days, according to Solomon Muyita, an energy ministry spokesman.

In the midst of an arid summer that set heat records across Europe, the continent’s rivers are evaporating.

The Rhine — a pillar of the German, Dutch and Swiss economies for centuries — is set to become virtually impassable at a key waypoint later this week, stymieing vast flows of diesel and coal. The Danube, which snakes its way 1,800 miles through central Europe to the Black Sea, is gummed up too, hampering grain and other trade.

Temperatures in Europe are climbing again as another heat wave sweeps the continent, threatening to disrupt travel and business and ratcheting up pressure on the region’s strained power infrastructure.

The mercury in Paris will likely reach 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday and rise further in the following days, according to forecaster Maxar Technologies LLC. Frankfurt and London will also see temperatures in the 30s, boosting demand for cooling and exacerbating bone-dry conditions that have prompted

The Rhine River is set to become virtually impassable at a key waypoint in Germany, as shallow water chokes off shipments of energy products and other industrial commodities along one of Europe’s most important waterways.

The marker at Kaub, west of Frankfurt, is

The central European nation was already experiencing oil-supply hiccups after a price cap introduced by Premier Viktor Orban spurred fuel demand while discouraging imports. The disruption to Russian crude shipments through Ukraine to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic via the southern leg of the Druzhba pipeline worsens the situation, threatening shortages if the shutdown is prolonged.

London (AP) -- British children’s author and illustrator Raymond Briggs, whose creations include “The Snowman” and “Fungus the Bogeyman,” has died. He was 88.

Briggs' family said he died Tuesday, and thanked staff at Royal Sussex County Hospital in southern England “for their kind and thoughtful care of Raymond in his final weeks.”