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10 things you need to know about business this morning

Here's what you need to know for Tuesday

Zlata Rodionova
Wednesday 19 August 2015 07:04 BST
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ShellNo flotilla participants shown demonstrating near the Polar Pioneer oil drilling rig
ShellNo flotilla participants shown demonstrating near the Polar Pioneer oil drilling rig (Getty)

1. Shell wins permission to drill for oil off Alaska. The Obama administration has given conditional approval to a renewed plan for Royal Dutch Shell Pfc to drill for oil off of Alaska's Arctic coast in the Chukchi Sea. The decision comes three years since Shell's work in the Arctic was halted.

2. Oil prices dipped again this morning as traders braced for lower refinery consumption after the U.S. summer, while Asia's weakening economies and high global production stoked concerns about oversupply. Both crude oil benchmarks are now almost a third below their last peak in May, with data showing speculators have taken huge bets on further falls

3. The Thai baht has fallen to a six year low following yesterday's deadly bombing in Bangkok. The country's stock market was also in retreat, though Asian markets generally were down earlier today.

4. Angela Merkel's allies are struggling to contain a rebellion two days before a vote on a new €86 billion bailout for Greece, the Wall Street Journal reports.

5. Brazil's Petrobras may need to pay a record penalty of $1.6 billion or more in a US corruption probe. State-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA, expects to face the largest penalties ever levied by U.S. authorities in a corporate corruption investigation

6. The Swiss chocolate maker company, Lindt and Sprüngli, half-year profits rise to 17.5%. Net income at the 170-year old company grew 17.5% to SFr 90.6m ($92.5m), in line with estimates, in the first six months of the year.

7. Rail fares have risen nearly three times faster than wages over the past five years, new analysis suggests. Regulated fare prices jumped 25% between 2010 and 2015, while average pay rose 9% over the same period, according to a study by the TUC.

8. Britain’s North Sea oil workers threaten to take strike action for the first time since the Eighties after thousands of job cuts were triggered by plunging prices.

9. Nationwide has estimated that recent taxes changes could cost it £300m over five years and may hit lending.

10. Google has delayed its plans to trial its modular smartphone concept, codenamed Project Ara. The first Project Ara hardware was due to be trialled in Puerto Rico this year, but has been pushed back to at least 2016.The team blamed "lots of iterations" in the design, which was first shown off in 2013, for the delay. Project Ara is Google's intriguing attempt at creating a smartphone that comes in bits.

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