Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NIV6NR6KLVR5 (Bloomberg Politics) — Here we go again? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is prepared to testify again before Congress on the events surrounding the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stephens, according to Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NIV5RI6VDKHT (For more credit-market news, click TOP CM. To be sent this column, click SALT CMW.) (Bloomberg) — The business of bundling riskier U.S. mortgages into bonds without government backing is gearing up for a comeback. Just don’t call it subprime. Hedge fund Seer Capital Management, money

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NIT9HR6VDKHS (Bloomberg) — Satya Nadella, a year into his turnaround of Microsoft Corp., is being tripped up in overseas markets as a slump in China and Japan and a stronger U.S. dollar curbed sales of business-software licenses. Commercial-licensing revenue fell to $10.7 billion in the period that

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NIOVX36JIJUQ (Updates with Japanese government official in third paragraph.) (Bloomberg) — A Japanese hostage was shown killed in a purported Islamic State video after a deadline passed for Japan to pay a $200 million ransom, according to the Japanese government and a terrorist-monitoring group. Haruna Yukawa, a

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NISVEH6KLVR7 (Bloomberg) — Smartphones and tablet devices are the new weak spot in the battle against cyber-criminals, according to the head of computer security at Europe’s biggest phone company. Businesses and governments have already been struggling with a record number of so-called distributed denial of service attacks,

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NIRF066JIJUR (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s call to restrict oil exploration on 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge probably won’t have much practical impact for an area already off-limits to drillers, though it’s created a new fault line with the Republican-led Congress. The White

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NIAO4Y6JTSEJ (Bloomberg) — U.S. drillers have taken a record number of oil rigs out of service in the past six weeks as OPEC sustains its production, sending prices below $50 a barrel. The oil rig count has fallen by 209 since Dec. 5, the steepest six-week decline

(Bloomberg) — Japan is using “every channel available” to secure the release of Kenji Goto, a war journalist captured and threatened with death by Islamic State militants. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo on Monday that Japan would do its utmost to free Goto with the co-operation

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NILXXK6S972H (For more on oil’s decline, click EXT5 <GO>) (Bloomberg) — Oil jumped after the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Futures advanced as much as 3.1 percent in New York and 2.6 percent in London

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg. NILVBK6JTSEW (Bloomberg) — Islamic State will release a statement “soon” on two Japanese hostages it has threatened to kill sometime on Friday if Japan doesn’t pay a $200 million ransom, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported. The Japanese people are infidels at war with Islamic State, a spokesman