Bloomberg The search for a grand bargain among oil producers shifted to the Iranian capital on Wednesday as Venezuela and Qatar energy ministers initiated talks with Iran and Iraq to try to expand an agreement to freeze crude production to shore up prices. The spotlight that fixed on Tuesday on Doha, Qatar — where Saudi Arabia and Russia tentatively promised ...

Bloomberg A unit of China Petrochemical Corp., the country’s second biggest oil and gas producer known as Sinopec Group, will shut four oil fields in the eastern province of Shandong for the first time in its more than half a century history. Sinopec Shengli Oilfield Co. will shut the Xiaoying, Yihezhuang, Taoerhe and Qiaozhuang fields to save as much as ...

Athens / Bloomberg Greece, struggling with more than €100 billion ($112 billion) of soured loans, wants to cap distressed debt sales, the country’s economy minister said. Resisting calls from creditors to further open the market, George Stathakis, 62, said the government wants to maintain restrictions on the sale of such loans to distressed debt funds. Under the latest accord signed ...

Brussels / Bloomberg Prime Minister David Cameron edged closer to securing an overhaul of the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Union, as fellow leaders signaled they were ready to help him get a deal at this week’s EU summit. With Cameron due in Brussels on Thursday for the second time in 48 hours, he won the backing of ...

DUBLIN / Bloomberg Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael-Labour coalition looks set to lose its majority in the Feb. 26 general election, a poll late Tuesday in Dublin showed. That may push him toward Fianna Fail, which led Ireland into the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. Bookmaker Paddy Power makes a first-ever grand alliance between the two ...

Paris / Bloomberg Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was charged with illegal campaign financing in relation to his 2012 re-election bid, meaning he is now facing two possible trials in court as he contemplates an attempt to return to office. An investigative judge decided to charge the former French president for exceeding the legal limit for election expenses after questioning ...

London / Bloomberg Britain’s unemployment rate remains at its lowest level in a decade, official data showed on Wednesday. Unemployment stood at 5.1 percent in the three months to December, unchanged from the three months to November, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. That was the lowest rate, or proportion of the workforce that are unemployed, since October 2005. ...

LISBON / Bloomberg Portugal just can’t shake off its bears. The nation’s bonds are underperforming their counterparts across the euro area even as a recovery in stocks and oil prices boosted demand for higher-yielding assets. The extra yield, or spread, that investors get for holding Portuguese 10-year bonds instead of the benchmark German bund climbed for the first time in ...

Mayibouth / AFP In the remote wilderness of the Belinga mountains in northeast Gabon, men with shovels in hand dig from morning to night, filling wheelbarrows with soil laced with what they are looking for: gold. The clearing in the equatorial forest is covered with dozens of holes, some four metres (13 feet) deep. “We arrive around seven in the ...

AlmerIa / AFP In a vast sea of plastic greenhouses in southeastern Spain, dubbed “Europe’s vegetable garden”, discontent is growing among farmers who complain large supermarket chains do not pay enough and farm workers live in poverty. Since the 1980s, one of the largest concentrations of greenhouses in the world has developed on a coastal plain near the city of ...