News

Bloomberg World powers agreed on a partial cease-fire in Syria’s civil war, reaching a deal that could forestall a humanitarian crisis around the besieged city of Aleppo even amid skepticism about how broad and lasting the truce might be. Backing the accord were all the major outside powers in the five-year-old conflict, including the US, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and ...

Bloomberg Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said Germany’s decision to admit more than 1.1 million refugees within the last year is likely to strain the government’s target to cut greenhouse gas pollution. The minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet who also oversees housing asked for 3.9 billion euros ($4.4 billion) in additional spending through 2020 to build homes for asylum seekers. ...

Bloomberg Germany said there’s little progress in fulfilling a peace deal for Ukraine signed a year ago and called on the parties to the conflict to step up efforts after four- nation talks with Ukraine, Russia and France. While the intensity of fighting has declined, “we are still quite far off from implementing” the accord, said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier ...

Bloomberg Argentina’s new administration wasted little time trying to end US court orders barring the country from paying holders of its restructured debt, as it seeks to set aside its status as a credit-market pariah after 15 years. Representatives of newly seated President Mauricio Macri, after reaching a settlement with some holdout creditors, is urging US District Judge Thomas Griesa ...

KUWAIT/ AFP Kuwait and Italy will finalise a multi-billion-euro deal next week for the Gulf state to purchase Eurofighter jets, Kuwait’s defence minister has said. Sheikh Khaled Jarrah Al-Sabah did not specify the number of planes involved in the deal but the Eurofighter consortium said in September that Kuwait had agreed to buy 28 fighter jets. “Italian Defence Minister Roberta ...

New York / AFP US aerospace giant Boeing’s shares dived amid speculation that regulators are investigating its accounting for its 787 and 747 aircraft. In midday trade, shares in the Dow member were down about 10 percent at $104.44. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened a probe on Boeing’s profitability forecasts for the long-haul 787 and 747 jetliners, ...

Mexico / Bloomberg Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB, a bright spot for its struggling US-based parent company, will benefit this year as a weak peso spurs an increase in remittances while inflation remains in check, Chief Financial Officer Pedro Farah said. Latin America’s biggest retailer also plans to invest more in e-commerce and sell non-core businesses such as its Suburbia apparel ...

Berlin / Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the sole airline so far to take delivery of Airbus Group SE’s new A320neo model, will limit the plane to domestic German routes until glitches with the engine cooling system are resolved in coming weeks. Lufthansa has flown its first A320neo between Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich since receiving the aircraft in January, and the ...

BANGKOK / Bloomberg Thai Airways International Pcl will continue to ground 10 Airbus A340s it hasn’t been able to sell because flying the four-engine planes isn’t worth it, even after fuel prices plunged more than 40 percent in the past year. “The fuel consumption is so uneconomical,” Thai Airways International President Charamporn Jotikasthira said in an interview in Bangkok. “All ...

Washington / Bloomberg It’s Valentine’s Day today, and Americans will buy $1.1 billion of confectionery to mark the occasion, according to data from the Washington-based National Confectioners Association. That’s up 2.6 percent from last year and the most since at least 2011. About three-quarters of that will be chocolate. The volume of US retail chocolate sales is expected to drop ...