BERLIN / Reuters Germany’s spending on social security could get out of hand as the population ages, a budget specialist in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives warned, contrasting current optimism over plans for no new net borrowing until 2020. Buoyed by record-low unemployment, rising wages and steady economic growth, the German government agreed last month to its biggest increase in the ...

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 ...