International News

Bloomberg Viacom Inc is in talks to sell a majority stake in some of its China operations, according to a person familiar with the matter. The New York-based company has had talks about a sale with at least one Chinese entity, the person said. The discussions involved the potential sale of a majority share in Viacom’s channel brands, such as ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha has urged those living in the Thai capital, Bangkok, to stay indoors as the city’s air pollution reached dangerous levels. The air quality index, or AQI, climbed to 182 in Bangkok at 10:14am — higher than the levels in Asia’s famously polluted metropolises of New Delhi, Beijing and Jakarta — before falling back to ...

Bloomberg China vehicle sales fell for the first time in 28 years, raising the prospect of a government-led stimulus to revive demand in the world’s biggest auto market as consumers from Europe to US balk at buying new cars. Deliveries of passenger vehicles to dealers fell 4.1 percent to 23.7 million units last year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co unveiled a new range of inexpensive smartphones for India, seeking to win back customers in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market and regain ground lost to Xiaomi Corp and other Chinese rivals. The three M series devices, all priced below 20,000 rupees ($283) apiece, will launch on February 5 on the Samsung India online store as well ...

Bloomberg Angela Merkel this week will seek to bridge divisions in Germany about how quickly to cut the nation’s reliance on coal, a controversial issue that has sparked violent clashes between green protesters and police and rattled its brittle governing coalition. The Chancellor will use a Tuesday dinner meeting in Berlin to press a panel plotting an exit from the ...

Bloomberg Brazil owes nothing in the fight against global climate change and should be paid for its work so far, according to the country’s new environment minister. For Ricardo Salles, the Paris Accord in itself is neither good nor bad, but it must bring economic benefits to Brazil. If the agreement limits production or the use of land, Brazil could ...

Bloomberg FedEx Corp is testing full-service residential delivery of bulky products, a $9 billion market that couriers had left to more traditional trucking companies because large items don’t fit well in their sorting operations. The service would be offered through FedEx’s freight business, which is a less-than-truckload operation geared more towards industrial shipments. Under a pilot project, FedEx is carrying ...

Bloomberg Ford Motor Co’s Jim Hackett isn’t pleased with how things are going at the automaker he took charge of a year and a half ago. To afford the costly overhaul he’s embarking on, he’s on the verge of broadening an alliance with Volkswagen AG. “I want to tell you, I’m not happy about Ford’s performance” in 2018, Hackett said ...

Bloomberg These should be boom times for Detroit. Unemployment is at a half-century low, gasoline is cheap and auto sales in the US were near record levels last year. Yet American automakers are closing factories, cutting shifts and laying off thousands of workers. The industry is behaving like a recession has arrived. In one segment of the market, it has. ...

Bloomberg As Poland added to the global scrutiny of Huawei Technologies Co with the arrest of a company employee and a local former security agent, the country’s authorities also exposed the division in Europe over policy towards the Chinese technology giant. Huawei is facing increasing pressure across the European Union amid growing concerns that Beijing could use the company’s equipment ...