Bloomberg Soaring inflation, higher interest rates and supply-chain snarls spurred by the war in Ukraine pushed most of the European Union’s biggest eastern economies into contraction in the fourth quarter. Poland’s economy shrank 2.4% from the previous three months — much worse than the 0.5% forecast in a Bloomberg survey — for its second non-consecutive decline last year. It ...

Bloomberg Nato countries may agree as soon as this summer to spend at least 2% of their economic output on defense, a slight shift from the alliance’s 10-year-old pledge to “move toward the 2% guideline.” North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the alliance’s defense ministers were supposed to discuss the target when they meet in Brussels for ...

Bloomberg Secretary of State Antony Blinken is considering a meeting with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, at a security conference later this week, people familiar with the matter said, in what would be their first face-to-face talks since an uproar over a Chinese balloon led to a new spike in tensions. Blinken and Wang would meet at the Munich Security ...