International News

  BEIJING/ AP China’s top economic planner pledged on Tuesday to continue cutting steel and coal production that have been a source of trade friction with many countries. China reached targets for cuts in production capacity last year, Xu Shaoshi, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said, adding that hundreds of thousands of steel and coal workers have ...

    BLOOMBERG India’s automobile sales fell the most in 16 years last month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unprecedented clampdown on cash prompted consumers to delay their purchases of cars, motorcycles and trucks. Automobile sales fell 19 percent to 1.2 million units in December, the biggest drop since the same month in 2000, according to data released by the ...

  Bloomberg Consumers in China bought passenger vehicles at the fastest pace in three years to take advantage of a tax cut on small-engine automobiles, boosting deliveries of automakers from General Motors Co. to Great Wall Motor Co. Dealerships sold 23.9 million cars, sports utility and multipurpose vehicles last year, capping a 15.9 percent gain, according to data released Tuesday ...

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. bet early on virtual reality, buying Oculus VR 2 1/2 years ago to get its groundbreaking headset. Now it’s fighting claims that the Oculus Rift was built with stolen technology and promoted with a false origin story about a young entrepreneur tinkering in his parents’ garage. What started as a falling out between tech geeks has ...

  Bloomberg Optimism among America’s small businesses soared in December by the most since 1980 as expectations about the economy’s prospects improved dramatically in the aftermath of the presidential election. The National Federation of Independent Business’s index jumped 7.4 points last month to 105.8, the highest since the end of 2004, from 98.4. While seven of the 10 components increased ...

  Bloomberg Google, Facebook Inc. and other Internet companies will be covered by strict new European Union privacy rules that seek to limit access to consumers’ data. The EU proposed in a draft law unveiled in Brussels Tuesday giving online users more control of their settings and limiting the “overload of consent requests” for cookies people encounter when browsing the ...

  Bloomberg BMW lost its crown as the world’s biggest luxury-car brand to Mercedes-Benz, ending its reign after more than a decade amid a cluttered lineup of aging models. The Munich-based manufacturer sold 80,000 fewer cars last year than the Daimler AG brand, which drew younger buyers with sporty redesigns and a bigger array of increasingly popular SUVs. A rebound ...

  Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration will probably have to prepare India’s $300 billion budget in the dark. With less than a month to go before the annual presentation, his Statistics Office has refused to estimate the impact of Modi’s unprecedented cash clampdown on gross domestic product. All it said on Friday was that growth will slow to a ...

    Bloomberg Volvo Car Group, owned by a Chinese billionaire since 2010, plans to export half of a new South Carolina factory’s output to Asia and Europe. The company plans to build 60,000 S60 sedans in Charleston initially then expand to 100,000, Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars’ chief executive officer, said at a dinner at the North American International Auto ...

  Bloomberg Wealthy Asian investors unwilling to splurge on owning their own European soccer teams are showing their enthusiasm by helping fund the sport. Sales of football finance notes, backed by television rights of soccer clubs, doubled to $11 million last month from the amount issued in April, when they were opened to investors in the region, according to data ...