Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s provisions for the diesel-cheating scandal rose to 22.6 billion euros ($23.9 billion), as the German carmaker continues to tally damages from the worst crisis in its history. The company took a charge of 4.4 billion euros in the fourth quarter, more than double the total from the previous nine months, to reflect a settlement related ...

  Bloomberg Brazil is moving to cast off the last shackles of government influence at iron-ore giant Vale SA — but not before replacing the CEO with someone more politically palatable. Murilo Ferreira’s six-year contract won’t be renewed when it expires in May, the Rio de Janeiro-based company said in a statement on Friday. The announcement came days after Vale ...

  Bloomberg Top US health insurance executives will meet on Monday with President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with plans for the session, a sign of the White House’s deepening involvement in efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Attendees will include chief executives of some of the biggest US health insurers, like UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., ...

  Bloomberg Pfizer Inc. said that it received two subpoenas from the US Attorney’s office in Massachusetts related to charities that help Medicare patients afford co-payments for drugs, the latest company to disclose involvement in the probe. The New York-based drugmaker said in a securities filing that it received subpoenas on December 2015 and on July 2016 requesting documents related ...

  Bloomberg Canadian consumer prices surged in January on the back of rising gasoline prices and new carbon levies, bringing inflation to the highest in more than two years. The consumer price index advanced 2.1 percent from a year earlier, Statistics Canada reported Friday from Ottawa, up from 1.5 percent in December. Economists had estimated a gain of 1.6 percent, ...

  BEIRUT / AP Twin attacks on two Syrian security offices in the central city of Homs Saturday killed at least 32 people, including a senior security official who heads the feared Military Intelligence services, state media and officials reported. An al-Qaida-linked insurgent coalition known as the Levant Liberation Committee claimed responsibility for the attacks, which also left another high-ranking ...

  SOUTH OF MOSUL / AP Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul on Saturday amid stiff resistance from entrenched IS fighters, a commander on the scene said. Special forces Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said that his troops are “moving very slowly” and that IS fighters are responding with car bombs, snipers and dozens of armed drones. Hundreds of civilian ...

  ANKARA / AP Turkey’s prime minister has officially launched his ruling party’s campaign for a “yes” vote in a referendum on ushering a presidential system, which critics fear will concentrate too many powers in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Binali Yildirim formally got campaigning going on Saturday telling supporters in a sports arena that the proposed new ...

  BERLIN / AP Angela Merkel’s conservatives have formally nominated the German chancellor as her party’s top candidate for the September parliamentary election in the region where she has her political base. The dpa news agency reported that Merkel won the support of 95 percent of delegates at a convention of the Christian Democrats’ branch in northeastern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state ...

  Bloomberg Vice President Mike Pence told an influential group of Jewish Republicans gathered in Las Vegas that the US is “assessing” whether to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as he sought to assure a key constituency and political fundraising powerhouse of the administration’s commitment to their causes. “The president I know will be ...