Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to vault Japan out of 15 years of deflation risks losing public support by spurring too much inflation too quickly as companies add extra price increases to this month’s sales-tax bump. Businesses from Suntory Beverage and Food Ltd. to beef bowl chain Yoshinoya Holdings Co. have raised costs more than the 3 percentage point levy increase. This month’s inflation rate could be 3.5 percent, the fastest since 1982, according to Yoshiki Shinke, the most accurate foreca

Millions of smartphones and tablets running Google Inc.’s Android operating system have the Heartbleed software bug, in a sign of how broadly the flaw extends beyond the Internet and into consumer devices. While Google said in a blog post that all versions of Android are immune to the flaw, it added that the “limited exception” was one version dubbed 4.1.1, which was released in 2012.Security researchers said that version of Android is still used in millions of smartphones and tablets, including

China unveiled a plan Thursday to give foreign investors greater access to its stock market by allowing investors in Shanghai and Hong Kong to trade shares on each other's exchanges.Securities regulators in China and the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong said that the stock exchanges in both cities would be connected in a pilot program.Authorized investors in Shanghai and Hong Kong will be able to buy and sell up to 23.5 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) of stocks in certain companies each

Japanese consumers are keeping their wallets firmly closed after the first sales tax rise in 17 years, with luxury items and appliances suffering as one major department store reported a 25 percent drop in sales.The precipitous plunge comes after millions of shoppers made a last-minute dash to stores before the national levy rose to 8.0 percent from 5.0 percent on April 1, a rise that sparked fears of a drop in consumer spending in turn derailing Japan's nascent economic recovery.Like many retai

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Americans and Germans are broadly supportive of a U.S.-EU free-trade pact under negotiation, but differ over details, especially forging similar goods and services standards, according to a survey released Wednesday.Common regulatory standards are perhaps the most ambitious objective of the bilateral talks that began last July to create the world’s biggest free-trade zone.The so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would vastly expand the U.S.-EU economic rela