ALBANY / AP Environmental and public policy groups in New York are calling for a state constitutional amendment that would guarantee residents a right to clean air and water. Environmental Advocates of New York and EffectiveNY are promoting the proposed amendment with online video ads on Thursday featuring children from Hoosick Falls, where water wells have been contaminated by …

  Bloomberg London’s housing market underperformed the rest of the UK for the first time in eight years as buyers increasingly found themselves stretched by affordability, according to Nationwide Building Society. Home prices in the capital rose 3.7 percent in 2016 from a year earlier, down from 12.2 percent in 2015, the mortgage lender said on Thursday. Across the U.K., …

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG bought North American parking-payment operator PayByPhone in the latest move by Europe’s biggest carmaker to expand from manufacturing into mobility services. The purchase of Vancouver-based PayByPhone, which processed more than $250 million in transactions this year, will turn the German company’s Volkswagen Financial Services unit into the leader in mobile payments for parking, the automaker said …