The Reserve Bank of Australia left its benchmark interest rate at the highest level in the developed world as consumer restraint and a strengthening currency tempered gains in inflation. Governor Glenn Stevens held the overnight cash rate target at 4.75 percent Tuesday, as forecast by all 25 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Stevens told lawmakers in testimony less than three weeks ago the ce

Ford Motor Co. improved the most since last year in Consumer Reports’ annual automaker rankings, bolstered by reliability for resale value, the magazine said. Ford received 67 points out of 100, according to results released Monday at the National Press Club in Washington. It didn’t provide a year-earlier comparison. Consumer Reports commended the manufacturer for the amount of room inside its veh

BEIJING (AP) ― China’s leadership is promising to steer the economy in a new direction in its blueprint for the next five years that would empower consumers and narrow a yawning wealth gap but require politically contentious reforms.The latest Five-Year Plan ― a throwback to central planning but a useful roadmap of party goals ― calls for creating self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumpti

Fujifilm Holdings Corp. agreed to buy Merck & Co.’s BioManufacturing Network for making supplies used in clinical studies of biological drugs, a Merck spokesman said in an interview.The network Fujifilm is acquiring is made up of Merck subsidiaries Diosynth RTP LLC in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and MSD Biologics (U.K.) Ltd. in Billingham, England, Ian McConnell, a spokesman for Whiteh

MUMBA (AFP) ― BP’s multi-billion-dollar tie-up with Reliance will accelerate fuel-hungry India’s exploration for energy and hand the Indian giant the skills to develop hard-to-exploit reserves, analysts say.The British energy group on Monday agreed to pay $7.2 billion for a 30-percent stake in Reliance’s 23 largely unexplored deepwater oil and gas fields off the coast of India, which cover an area equivalent to the North Sea.The tie-up with embattled BP, which this month reported its first annua