WARSAW / Reuters Central European manufacturing continued to grow in March as a jump in Polish factory activity managed to offset slower growth from Germany, the region’s main trade partner. The former communist countries of the European Union’s eastern wing rely on demand and investment from richer western Europe, which over the past two decades has lifted their living standards. …

Bloomberg Russia’s oil output set a post-Soviet high in March as the success of a proposed crude production freeze between OPEC members and other major producers appeared to be in doubt. Russian production of crude and a light oil called condensate climbed 2.1 percent in March from a year earlier to 10.912 million barrels a day, according to the Energy …

Bloomberg The U.K.’s steel crisis — worsened by Tata Steel Ltd.’s decision to sell its plant in Port Talbot, South Wales — has been exacerbated by three green taxes that the government implemented to boost clean energy, according to the manufacturers’s association EEF. The three levies are the Carbon Price Floor, Renewables Obligation and Feed-In Tariff policies. Each works differently. …