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FINANCIAL MARKETS
Asian stocks fall ahead of US tariff deadline, US, EU rates
BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets are down today as investors look ahead to a U.S. tariff deadline on Chinese imports and American and European interest rate decisions.
Benchmarks in Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong are down, trading in a narrow range, while Seoul has advanced.
Wall Street closed lower yesterday, snapping a three-day winning streak for the benchmark S&P 500.
Losses for technology, health care and financial companies outweighed gains elsewhere in the market.
The S&P 500 lost 0.3% to 3,135.96. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4% to 27,909.60. The Nasdaq dropped 0.4% to 8,621.83.
WORLD TRADE-WTO
World trade without rules? US shuts down WTO appeals court
GENEVA (AP) — Global commerce is losing its umpire and leaving countries unable to resolve trade disputes at the World Trade Organization.
They will be subject instead to what critics call “the law of the jungle.’’
The United States seems to like it that way. Two of three judges on the WTO’s Appellate Body are to step down today at the end of their terms and rendering what amounts to the Supreme Court of world trade unable to issue rulings.
President Donald Trump has blocked replacements from taking up their jobs.
MOBILE-SPRINT-ANTITRUST
Sprint exec messages suggest T-Mobile deal may boost prices
NEW YORK (AP) — Messages by a Sprint executive revealed in federal court suggested he thought an acquisition by T-Mobile might push up mobile-service prices for consumers, undercutting T-Mobile's argument that its deal will benefit Americans.
The text messages, presented by attorneys for a coalition of states suing to block the deal on antitrust grounds, were sent in October 2017 by Roger Sole, Sprint’s chief marketing officer, to Sprint's then-CEO Marcelo Claure. Sole wrote that customer prices could rise an average $5 per user if a deal went through.
Merger supporters argue that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint will emerge as a fiercer rival to Verizon and AT&T that will help keep prices low.
A group of 14 state attorneys general, led by New York and California, are trying to convince a federal judge that the $26.5 billion deal should be blocked. T-Mobile has already notched approvals from key federal regulators, setting up an unusual situation where states officials are seeking to overturn their federal counterparts.
BOEING PLANE-FAA HEARING
Families of crash passengers want wider review of Boeing Max
WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Federal Aviation Administration will face questions about whether the agency is too cozy with Boeing when he testifies this week before a congressional panel.
The chairman of the House Transportation Committee says he plans to ask FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson about Boeing's influence over the FAA's Seattle office and incidents in which FAA managers vetoed the concerns of the agency's own safety experts.
Chairman Peer DeFazion, an Oregon Democrat, says investigators are “”having a hard time piercing the veil of how consistently and repeatedly Boeing is managing to pressure and overcome the objectives of the safety specialists.”
Dickson is scheduled to testify at a hearing Wednesday, just as the FAA gears up to review changes Boeing is making in its 737 Max jet. The Max remains grounded after two deadly crashes. Relatives of passengers who died in the second crash say FAA is focusing too narrowly on Boeing's revamp of a flight-control system implicated in both accidents.
BOSTON HEART DIAGNOSTICS-SETTLEMENT
Massachusetts lab to pay $26M for scheme with Texas doctors
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — e U.S. Department of Justice has announced that Boston Heart Diagnostics Corporation has agreed to pay nearly $27 million to settle claims that it allegedly paid doctors in Texas and waived patient co-payments in exchange for lab tests it then billed to federal healthcare programs.
The $26.7 settlement with the Framingham, Massachusetts, company reached last month resolves allegations that Boston Heart provided doctors at small hospitals in Texas with in-office dietitians, paid processing and handling fees and waived patient co-payments and deductibles in exchange for referrals for laboratory testing.
This settlement also resolves allegations that the clinical diagnostics company conspired from 2015 to 2017 with the hospitals, and others, to submit outpatient claims for individuals who were not, in fact, hospital outpatients.
Boston Heart Diagnostics Corporation agreed to pay nearly $27 million to settle claims that it allegedly paid doctors in Texas and waived patient co-payments in exchange for lab tests it then billed to federal healthcare programs, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.
VENEZUELA-JAILED AMERICANS
US oil executives jailed in Venezuela given house arrest
MIAMI (AP) — Six American oil executives held in an overcrowded Venezuelan prison for two years on corruption charges have been granted house arrest.
The partial release on Monday of the six employees of Houston-based Citgo was confirmed to The Associate Press by two people familiar with the case.
The men were hauled away while on a business trip to Caracas just before Thanksgiving in 2017. They are awaiting trial on corruption charges stemming from a never-executed plan to refinance some $4 billion in Citgo bonds by offering a 50 percent stake in the company as collateral.
OBIT-UPC-INVENTOR
George Laurer, inventor of ubiquitous UPC, dies at 94
WENDELL, N.C. (AP) — George J. Laurer, whose invention of the Universal Product Code at IBM transformed retail and other industries around the world, has died. He was 94.
A funeral was held on Monday for Laurer, who died Thursday at his home in Wendell, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh. Laurer was an electrical engineer with IBM in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park in the early 1970s when he spearheaded the development of t he UPC, or bar code
The now-ubiquitous marking, composed of unique black bars and a 12-digit number, allowed retailers to identify products and their prices as they are scanned, usually at checkout. Today, such UPCs are on all kinds of products, services and other items for identification.
SOUTH KOREA-OBIT-DAEWOO FOUNDER
Founder of Daewoo business group, dies
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Now-collapsed Daewoo Group founder Kim Woo-choong has died at age 83.
An organization of former Daewoo employees says Kim died of pneumonia and old age the previous night at a hospital near Seoul.
Kim started as a textile salesman and built Daewoo, which later grew into South Korea's second largest business group.
Daewoo collapsed in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, and Kim fled the country to avoid investigations into alleged fraud allegations. He returned to South Korea in 2005 and was sent to prison, before he was released in a special presidential pardon in 2007.
CAMBODIA-US-SANCTIONS
Cambodia dismayed over US sanctions for corruption, logging
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The Cambodian government has expressed “strong dismay" over a U.S. Treasury decision to sanction two businessmen suspected of corruption and illegal logging.
The Foreign Ministry says the sanctions were based on groundless accusations.
The U.S. Treasury Department says it had designated Try Pheap and companies owned or by controlled by him for sanctions for alleged graft and illegal logging.
It designated Kun Kim, three of his relatives and their family businesses for allegedly engaging in corruption and illegal extraction of natural resources. Kun Kim is a longtime supporter of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and a former general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.
The sanctions freeze U.S.-based assets of the people and their businesses and ban doing business with them.
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