International News

  ALBANY / AP Environmental and public policy groups in New York are calling for a state constitutional amendment that would guarantee residents a right to clean air and water. Environmental Advocates of New York and EffectiveNY are promoting the proposed amendment with online video ads on Thursday featuring children from Hoosick Falls, where water wells have been contaminated by ...

  Bloomberg London’s housing market underperformed the rest of the UK for the first time in eight years as buyers increasingly found themselves stretched by affordability, according to Nationwide Building Society. Home prices in the capital rose 3.7 percent in 2016 from a year earlier, down from 12.2 percent in 2015, the mortgage lender said on Thursday. Across the U.K., ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG bought North American parking-payment operator PayByPhone in the latest move by Europe’s biggest carmaker to expand from manufacturing into mobility services. The purchase of Vancouver-based PayByPhone, which processed more than $250 million in transactions this year, will turn the German company’s Volkswagen Financial Services unit into the leader in mobile payments for parking, the automaker said ...

  Berlin / AFP Britain’s chief financial officers are turning optimistic as they head into the new year, though they intend to be cautious amid the cloudy economic outlook, according to Deloitte. The number of CFOs that are more positive about the prospects for their companies outweigh those who are more pessimistic by the most in 18 months, the fourth-quarter ...

  Berlin / AFP German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn said on Thursday it planned to significantly ramp up cargo transport to China following a record year, using the world’s longest train line in a modern-day revival of the Silk Road route. More than 40,000 containers were transported between the two countries in 2016, up from 35,000 a year earlier ...

  Bloomberg South Korea’s antitrust regulator slapped a record 1.03 trillion won ($853 million) fine on Qualcomm Inc. for violating antitrust laws, the latest in a string of government actions that threaten the US chipmaker’s most profitable business. The South Korean Fair Trade Commission said on Wednesday that the company licensed its key patents only to mobile-phone makers and didn’t ...

  Bloomberg Toshiba shares dived more than 20 percent on Wednesday in their second straight double-digit plunge, as the company said it may book a one-time loss of several billion dollars over its US nuclear business. The stock price dropped by 20.42 percent to 311.60 yen, the largest fall allowed for a single day, about 30 minutes after the opening ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s industrial output rose the most in five months in November as export volumes rebounded sharply, pointing to an expected economic expansion in the fourth quarter. Industrial production increased 1.5 percent in November from a month earlier (forecast +1.7 percent). Output is forecast to rise 2 percent in December and 2.2 percent in January. Retail sales rose 1.7 ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s fourth nuclear power plant went online on Wednesday, a joint collaboration with China that adds 340 megawatts to the national grid as part of the goverment’s efforts to end a growth-sapping energy deficit. Pakistan is one of the few developing countries pursuing atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, as it ...

  Bloomberg The world’s No. 2 economy showed improvement in the fourth quarter with gains across all industries, according to the China Beige Book. Revenues, profits, jobs and capital expenditures improved from the third quarter while new orders were stable, according to the private survey released by CBB International, which collects anecdotal accounts similar to those in the Federal Reserve ...