Bloomberg Canadian retailers got a boost in February after public-health authorities lifted lockdowns. Retail sales rise 4.0% on the month, preliminary data by Statistics Canada show. The bounce-back comes after a 1.1% drop in receipts in January and a 3.7% decline in December, when many businesses were forced to close because of a second wave of Covid-19 pandemic. But the ...

Bloomberg Volkswagen AG plans to widen cost-saving efforts and standardise key technologies as the German manufacturer seeks to rival Tesla Inc. on electric cars and keep traditional rivals at bay. VW targets 1 million electric-vehicle sales this year and aims to become the global EV market leader by 2025 at the latest, the company said. By 2030, the share of ...

Bloomberg BMW AG’s Mini brand will go all-electric from 2030 as the automaker intensifies its transition to battery-powered vehicles, according to people familiar with the matter. The iconic British brand will roll out its last combustion-engine variant in 2025, and around half of all Mini sales should be electric by 2027, one of the people said, declining to be named ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. is expanding digital medical consultations to its employees across the US and says it will start offering the service to other companies. Together with the launch of an online pharmacy in December, the initiative marks Amazon’s entry into the gargantuan US health care industry. Medical services have long been seen as a target for Amazon, both to ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. warned it’s grappling with the fallout from a “serious imbalance” in semiconductors globally, becoming the largest tech giant to voice concerns about chip shortages spreading beyond the automaking industry. Samsung, one of the world’s largest makers of chips and consumer electronics, expects the crunch to pose a problem to its business next quarter, co-Chief Executive Officer ...

Bloomberg The autonomous-car artificial intelligence (AI) from Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo avoided or mitigated crashes in most of a set of virtually recreated fatal accidents, according to a white paper the company. The simulations were based on 72 fatal crashes that occurred between 2008 and 2017 in Chandler, Arizona, where Waymo currently operates a small-scale autonomous ride-hail service based on its ...

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc.’s Google is halving the percentage it takes from app developers on sales through its Google Play store, following a similar move by rival Apple Inc. last year. The Mountain View, California-based internet giant said it’s reducing the fees to 15% from 30% for the first $1 million in revenue on sales of apps and in-app-purchases each year. ...

Bloomberg Top Indian government officials are debating whether to set a goal to zero out its greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, an ambitious target that would require overhauling its coal-dependent economy. Officials close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi are working with senior bureaucrats and foreign advisers to consider ways to meet the 2050 deadline, according to people familiar with the ...

Bloomberg Gazprom will export natural gas to Armenia via Azerbaijan for the first time in almost three decades as former Soviet neighbours work to reopen communication links following last year’s war. The Russian gas giant’s export arm signed a short-term transit deal with Azeri state energy firm Socar, both firms said. Azerbaijan’s pipeline will be needed as the link that ...

Bloomberg NRG Energy Inc. withdrew an earlier full-year profit forecast and said it expects a $750 million loss due to the brutal cold snap that froze Texas and led to sweeping blackouts across the state. “Based on new information available to us, we are unable to provide financial guidance due to the unprecedented and unpredictable market outcomes resulting from winter ...