International News

  Bloomberg Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc has delayed plans to bring employees back to the office, and will require those who do come back to have a booster shot to protect against Covid-19. Employees are expected to return to the office on March 28, according to a company spokeswoman. Meta already announced last summer that it would require ...

  Bloomberg Tesla Inc agreed to purchase nickel supplies from miner Talon Metals Corp. as an expected surge in demand spurs automakers to secure access to battery metals and other electric-car parts. Tesla committed to purchase 75,000 metric tons of nickel concentrates produced from Talon’s Tamarack project, with the price linked to the London Metal Exchange’s cash-settlement price for nickel, ...

  Bloomberg Canada’s labour market beat expectations in December, a strong end to a record year for employment gains. Employment rises 54,700 last month, Statistics Canada reported in Ottawa. That’s more than double the 25,000 gain economists were predicting in a Bloomberg survey. Full-time jobs actually surged by 123,000, as many part-time workers shifted to more permanent employment — another ...

  Bloomberg Germany suffered its costliest natural disaster on record last year, as flash floods led to damages that vastly exceeded the amount covered by insurers. Torrential rainfall that devastated parts of western Germany in July 2021 cost Europe’s biggest economy $40 billion, according to a Munich Re report. Roughly a quarter of that will be met by the insurance ...

  Bloomberg The New York Times Co agreed to buy the Athletic, acquiring a sports-news website with more than 1 million subscribers. The newspaper publisher is paying $550 million for the Athletic, which will remain a standalone product, Times Chief Executive Officer Meredith Kopit Levien said in a statement. The deal is expected to close by the end of March. ...

  Bloomberg UK property developers must contribute to a 4 billion-pound-fund ($5.4 billion) to fix dangerous cladding on low-rise apartment blocks by March or face new regulations that would force them to pay, Housing Secretary Michael Gove said. Gove said it was “morally wrong” that homeowners were still trapped in unsafe and unsellable apartments more than four years after the ...

Bloomberg Polish inflation hit a 21-year-high, exceeding most analysts’ forecasts and boosting expectations that the central bank will keep raising interest rates. Consumer prices in December jumped 8.6% from a year earlier, compared with 7.8% in November, preliminary data showed. The reading was above a median of 8.2% in a Bloomberg survey of 23 economists. This week, Governor Adam Glapinski ...

  Bloomberg Inflation in the euro region accelerated beyond already record levels, defying expectations for a slowdown and complicating the task for European Central Bank officials who insist the current spike is temporary. Consumer prices jumped 5% from a year earlier in December — faster than the previous month’s 4.9% gain and more than the 4.8% median estimate in a ...

  Bloomberg Italy is trying to lock in historically low financing costs at the start of a year where inflationary and political pressures could spell an end to super easy borrowing conditions. Rome offered a new 30-year bond via banks, kicking off Europe’s first sovereign syndicated deal of 2022. Initial price guidance was at eight basis points above comparable bonds, ...

  Bloomberg Alphabet Inc’s Google was slapped with a record French fine of $170 million by the nation’s privacy watchdog, together with a 60 million-euro fine for Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook, over the way the companies manage cookies. CNIL, France’s data protection authority, issued the companies with a three-month ultimatum “to provide internet users located in France with a means ...