Bloomberg France’s finance chief contracted Covid-19 amid the virus surge in his country and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK may need tighter restrictions, signalling Europe’s growing risk of the kind of lockdowns that crippled the economy in the second quarter. Mayor Sadiq Khan sounded the alarm for London, saying it’s “increasingly likely” that “additional measures will soon be ...

Bloomberg Britain’s labour market took a turn for the worse in July even as the economy gradually reopened, taking total job losses under the pandemic to almost 700,000 and raising pressure on the government to extend support programs. Employment falls by 102,000, the first decline since April, the Office for National Statistics said. The single-month unemployment figure reached 4.4%, the ...

Bloomberg Ireland moved to tighten restrictions in Dublin, in an effort to contain a coronavirus surge in the capital. Under the new guidelines, people are advised not to travel to or from the Dublin region. Indoor dining in restaurants is banned, and gatherings of all types heavily restricted. The restrictions will come into force from midnight for at least the ...

Bloomberg Argentina’s latest crackdown on dollar purchases exposed a split between the nation’s top policy makers as they struggle to find a way back from the deepest crash on record. Argentina’s dollar bonds extended their drop, two days after central bank chief Miguel Pesce tightened already-strict currency controls. Pesce wanted to ban savers from buying any dollars at all, while ...

Bloomberg Tropical Storm Beta formed in the Gulf of Mexico, where it could menace the south Texas coast as a hurricane next week. Beta has winds of 60 miles (95 kilometers) per hour and was about 305 miles east of the mouth of the Rio Grande, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory at 11 pm New York ...

Bloomberg Rush hour is back with a vengeance in Mexico City, diners have returned to restaurants in Bogota and joggers have flocked to Buenos Aires’s parks. In Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, crowds have packed beaches and even the sprawling fake lawn beneath Alphabet Inc’s regional headquarters. In Latin America’s big cities, as in other places around the globe, ...

Bloomberg By the start of the next decade Google wants to make sure all the electricity it uses for its data centers and offices will be truly 100% carbon free. Under its previous pledge the tech giant has been offsetting its consumption with direct renewable electricity purchases and the associated certificates. On paper, that allowed it to claim it used ...

Bloomberg IPhone users in the US are rushing to install messaging app WeChat days before President Donald Trump is set to ban downloads in the country. WeChat downloads surged to make it the 100th most-downloaded app in the US, according to mobile analytics firm SensorTower. It has typically ranked between 1,000th and 1,500th this year. This is the first time ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc. and the government of Singapore have partnered on a two-year health initiative dubbed LumiHealth, which is built around tracking and rewarding user behaviour through the Apple Watch gadget and an iPhone app. As part of the scheme, Singapore residents will be able to earn as much as S$380 ($280) in rewards and vouchers by completing goals and ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc.’s self-driving-car unit, Zoox Inc., is getting a green light from California to test autonomous vehicles on public roads without a safety driver, becoming the fourth company to receive the state’s blessing for truly driverless testing. The permit allows Zoox to operate two vehicles without a driver behind the wheel, a step up from approval it received four ...