Data Dive

The fortunes of the richest 100 members of China's parliament and its advisory body - all dollar billionaires - grew about 64 percent in the four years since Xi Jinping rose to power, according to data from an organization tracking wealth in China.

A decade ago, Lightspeed Venture Partners was an obscure firm investing in highly technical startups that were mostly unknown outside of Silicon Valley.

U.S. consumer spending cooled in January as demand for automobiles and utilities fell, but inflation recorded its biggest monthly increase in four years, raising the probability of an interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve this month.

U.S. application activity to refinance a mortgage climbed to its highest level since mid-December as 30-year home borrowing costs declined to their lowest in six weeks, Mortgage Bankers Association data released on Wednesday showed.

President Donald Trump is seeking what he called a "historic" increase in defense spending, but ran into immediate opposition from Republicans in Congress who must approve his plan and said it was not enough to meet the military's needs.

The Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee called President Donald Trump's reported $603 billion defense budget request low on Monday, a sign of the fight ahead between Trump's party and Democrats, who oppose slashing non-military spending to boost Pentagon funding.

With a month to go this fiscal year, Japan's installation of new wind power capacity in 2016-17 is set to come in almost double that of the previous 12 months, propelled by higher tariffs guaranteed by Tokyo and a rising number of offshore wind farms.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC on Monday his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc had more than doubled its stake in Apple Inc. since the end of 2016, making it one of Berkshire's biggest equity holdings, and that U.S. stocks overall were not in "bubble territory."

Gregory Abel, chief executive of the energy unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, was awarded $17.52 million in compensation last year, mainly in the form of a bonus, a regulatory filing shows.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is running a new price-comparison test in at least 1,200 U.S. stores and squeezing packaged goods suppliers in a bid to close a pricing gap with German-based discount grocery chain Aldi and other U.S. rivals like Kroger Co , according to four sources familiar with the moves.

Monday's release of euro zone business and consumer sentiment roughly mirrored what was seen earlier this month in Germany: businesses are relatively bullish, consumers no so much.

China for the first time became Germany's most important trading partner in 2016, overtaking the United States, which fell back to third place behind France, data showed on Friday.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week but the four-week average of such claims, considered a better gauge, fell to a 43-1/2-year low in a sign of a strengthening labor market.

A surprise boost to Barclays' capital reserves failed to convince some analysts and investors on Thursday, with the British bank's shares falling nearly three percent as the market digested the figures, reversing earlier gains.

This year's Oscars is filled with projects fueled by passion and deeply-held personal visions that prevailed over skepticism, funding troubles and conventional wisdom.

Rank-and-file Republicans are more concerned about leaks to the media of conversations between Trump advisers and the Russian government than they are about the conversations themselves, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released Wednesday.

Unilever sought to show shareholders it can go it alone on Wednesday after rejecting Kraft Heinz's $143 billion bid, with the promise of a swift, far-reaching review.

China said on Tuesday it opposed action by other countries under the pretext of freedom of navigation that undermined its sovereignty, after a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group began patrols in the contested South China Sea.

Kraft Heinz's dropped bid to buy Unilever is the third-largest M&A; deal to collapse, according to Thomson Reuters data, adding to a recent run of failures that highlights the appetite for the pursuit of audacious mega-mergers.