Global business

Global businessNokia's share price fell to its lowest level in 13 years after the company issued a profit warning and forecast that sales in the second quarter would be "substantially below" expectations. The Finnish manufacturer of mobile phones is struggling with the transition to smartphones. In February, it announced that it would switch the operating system that runs its handsets to Microsoft Windows, though its first such products are not due until at least the end of this year.

Sprint Nextel formally asked regulators to block AT&T's proposed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA, arguing it would lead to less competition. The regulators are expected to complete their reviews within a year.

South Africa's Competition Tribunal gave the go-ahead for Wal-Mart's takeover of Massmart, a South African retailer with operations in 14 African countries. Approval for the deal was in some doubt because of union opposition, but the retailers have agreed to keep current staffing levels for two years and to retain working arrangements for three years. The unions have warned, however, that they also want to renegotiate the terms for local suppliers.

India's economic growth rate slowed again in the first three months of the year, to a yearly rate of 7.8 percent. The latest reports indicating less-robust economic expansion are not expected to deter the country's central bank from its policy of raising interest rates to tackle inflation.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Hillcorp Energy agreed to sell their oil and natural gas assets in a south Texan shale formation to Marathon Oil for $3.5 billion. KKR made its initial investment in the project only a year ago and stands to make a handsome profit from the deal.

The EU's European Investment Bank suspended all lending to Glencore, citing "serious concerns" with governance at the world's biggest commodities trading company, which recently made its stock market debut. The EIB is investigating a $50 million loan it made to Glencore's Mopani copper mine in Zambia, but says its concerns "go far beyond" that investment. Glencore said it welcomes the inquiry and expects to be "completely exonerated."

Renault named a new chief operating officer to replace Patrick Pelata, who resigned in April along with a handful of other executives because of a botched internal investigation into corporate espionage. Renault's new No. 2 is Carlos Tavares, the head of the Americas division of Nissan, Renault's Japanese partner.

Political economyGermany reversed course on nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, announcing that all of its nuclear power stations will be phased out by 2022. Nuclear power supplies around a quarter of Germany's electricity. The government hopes to fill the gap with renewable energy, but critics say that this will be hard to achieve and that more gas- or coal-fired power generation may mean that the country will miss its target for cutting carbon emissions.

The World Trade Organization's members agreed to try to salvage some of the Doha round's least contentious proposals that affect the poorest countries, for approval at a ministerial conference in December. However, some members warned that even this could be difficult, because troublesome issues such as cotton subsidies have been retained in the watered-down negotiations.

A draft report commissioned for the U.S. Agency for International Development found that last year's earthquake in Haiti killed between 46,000 and 85,000 people, not 316,000 as Haiti's government claims. It also suggested that only 66,000 Haitians are still living in tent cities, rather than the 600,000 that aid agencies state, and that many of those did not lose their homes in the disaster.

Five generals were among 120 soldiers who defected from Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Libya. Jacob Zuma, South Africa's president, flew to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in a vain bid to make peace under the African Union's aegis.

Google revealed that there had been another big cyber attack on its Gmail service, apparently originating from the city of Jinan in China. Google said that hackers tried to obtain the account details of hundreds of users, including senior American government figures, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (mostly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.