Los Angeles / AFP From real estate, to high-tech firms to entertainment giants, Chinese investments in the United States, notably California, are moving at a dizzying pace and are on course to smash records again this year. Chinese companies shelled out a record $15 billion last year in the US and that figure could more than double in 2016, …

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s former chief executive officer, Martin Winterkorn, approved a plan to disclose only partial information on the carmaker’s software rigging to U.S. authorities seven weeks before the scandal broke last year, Bild newspaper reported, citing newly uncovered documents. On July 28, 2015, Winterkorn signed off on talking points prepared ahead of an informal meeting with regulators in …

  San Sebastian / AFP Spain’s Basque country and Galicia went to the polls on Sunday in regional elections that may help unblock the long-lasting national political paralysis. The country is stuck in limbo, run by a government without full powers following two inconclusive elections which the conservative Popular Party (PP) won without an absolute majority, and which have seen …