U.S. HOUSING CONSTRUCTION UP 9.2 PERCENT

U.S. home construction rebounded in August at the fastest pace in seven months but applications for new building permits plunged, sending mixed signals for an industry struggling with rising lumber costs.

Housing starts increased 9.2 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.28 million units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Housing starts had declined 0.3 percent in July and 11.4 percent in June. The increase was the biggest since a 10.2 percent advance in January.

Global poverty drops to recordlow 10 percent.

Global poverty has fallen to a record low.

The World Bank said Wednesday that 10 percent of the world’s population lived on less than $1.90 per day in 2015 — the last year for which numbers were available — down from 11.2 percent in 2013.

That means 735.9 million people lived below the poverty threshold in 2015, down by 68.3 million from 804.2 million two years earlier.

Poverty dropped everywhere but in the Middle East and North Africa, where conflicts in Syria and Yemen ratcheted the poverty rate to 5 percent in 2015 from 2.6 percent in 2013, raising the number of impoverished to 18.6 million from 9.5 million.

Greenpeace links forest destruction for palm oil to brands.

JAKARTA, INDONESIA»

Greenpeace says global consumer brands continue to buy palm oil from companies that are cutting down Indonesia’s rain forests despite repeated pledges to clean up their supply chains.

The environmental group said in a report released Wednesday that 25 palm oilproducing groups it has investigated destroyed more than 130,000 hectares of natural forest in Indonesia since 2015.

The report said all but one of those producers had supplied palm oil to consumer companies that are household names around the world in the past year. They include giants such as Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever and ColgatePalmolive.

U.K. inflation spikes on higher clothing costs.

Official figures show that inflation in Great Britain unexpectedly rose in August to a sixmonth high as clothing and transport costs rose sharply.

The Office for National Statistics said Wednesday that consumer price inflation was 2.7 percent in the year to August.