Bloomberg The US is considering a range of sanctions to punish China for its crackdown on Hong Kong, people familiar with the matter said, as the Trump administration weighs whether to declare the former colony has lost its autonomy from Beijing. The Treasury Department could impose controls on transactions and freeze assets of Chinese officials and businesses for implementing a ...

Bloomberg Pressure is building on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to fire his chief aide, Dominic Cummings, with polls showing voters think he broke lockdown rules and members of parliament calling for him to go. Johnson was expected to face an hour and a half of sustained questioning from the senior members of parliament who make up the so-called Liaison Committee ...

Bloomberg South Korea, which won praise for containing the coronavirus without mass lockdowns, reported its biggest daily surge in infections in seven weeks, underscoring the challenge in permanently taming the illness in the absence of a viable vaccine. The Asian nation reported 40 new cases for May 26, the biggest one-day increase since April 8, according to data from Korea ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s laxer response to Covid-19 gave its citizens more freedom than most as the pandemic raged. But as other European Union members start to emerge from the worst, Swedes risk being left behind. Sweden’s foreign minister, Ann Linde, responded to a decision by Cyprus to blacklist her countrymen over concerns they might represent an unacceptable contagion risk. “We don’t ...

Bloomberg KKR & Co. said it will put $1 billion into a new data center venture in Europe, as private equity firms chase returns in the growing market for digital infrastructure assets. The investment firm is teaming up with industry veteran Franek Sodzawiczny to launch Global Technical Realty, which will develop and build data centers for large technology companies in ...

Bloomberg The euro-area economy is facing a contraction this year in line with the European Central Bank’s (ECB) more pessimistic forecasts, according to Christine Lagarde. Output in the region is likely to shrink between 8% to 12%, the ECB president said in an online question-and-answer session targeted at European youth. Estimates for a mild scenario are “out of date.” “We’ll ...

Bloomberg Britain could create 850,000 new green energy jobs this decade if it uses recovery stimulus to fast-track decarbonisation, a report has found. Financial stimulus being used to kick-start the economic recovery from coronavirus should accelerate the UK’s path towards net-zero emissions and limit the worst effects of climate change, according to a report by a the cross-party IPPR environmental ...

Bloomberg President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a raft of measures aimed at reviving France’s struggling car industry and drawing manufacturing back to local factories. The plan includes incentives for the purchase of electric cars, cash-for-clunkers to encourage consumers to trade in older, more polluting cars and subsidies for struggling car-parts makers. The total of roughly 8 billion euros ($9 billion) also ...

Bloomberg Argentina’s ninth default on its external debt is now official after some of its bonds were cut to default status by two rating companies. Fitch Ratings reduced the South American nation to restricted default (RD), while S&P Global downgraded four of its dollar-denominated bonds to default from CC following a missed $500 million payment last week. That sets up ...

Bloomberg Brazil, the biggest exporter of beef and chicken, is betting on a new set of safety standards to avoid the kind of mass processing disruptions that caused meat shortages and price spikes in America. The South American farming powerhouse plans to introduce new national guidelines that incorporate requirements from local authorities and labour prosecutors, Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina Dias ...