Bloomberg German towns and cities plagued by car and truck pollution will soon get the legal tools they need to ban older diesel vehicles from streets where emissions are highest. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government will remove the legal uncertainty that has made town mayors and councils hesitate to ban older diesels from their streets, said Deputy Environment Minister Jochen Flasbarth, ...

Bloomberg Italy will fail to reduce its debt load this year as much as previously targeted due to lower than expected economic growth. The debt ratio, the euro region’s second-highest, will slip to 132.4 percent of gross domestic product this year from 132.7 percent in 2015, Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan told reporters in Rome after the cabinet met to ...

Poland / AP Hundreds of thousands of people whose personal fates hinge on whether Britain leaves the European Union or stays don’t even have a say in the matter: Polish immigrants, a community so numerous that Polish has become Britain’s second most-spoken language. When Poland and many other countries once behind the Iron Curtain joined the EU 12 years ago, ...

Bloomberg It’s standard Republican criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. Sure, unemployment has been halved from 10 percent in 2009 to 5 percent today. But that’s mainly because so many people have gotten so discouraged that they’ve just given up looking for work. Factor that in and real joblessness is a lot higher — 20 percent plus, ...

Quito / Reuters Latin America’s main oil exporters called on both OPEC and non-OPEC nations to take action to stabilize oil markets, in a timid statement that did not explicitly back an output freeze or offer more aggressive proposals to shore up slumping prices. Delegations from Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela met in Quito in the run-up to a meeting ...

Bloomberg Canada’s dollar surged the most in three weeks after employers added more jobs in March than economists forecast, fanning speculation the Bank of Canada will refrain from cutting interest rates further. The loonie, as the Canadian dollar is known for the image of the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, gained 1.2 percent to C$1.2988 per U.S. dollar at ...

Bloomberg A group that holds defaulted Argentine bonds is seeking to block the nation from going forward with more than $6.2 billion in settlements until it gets paid. The investors, including Trinity Investments Limited, Attestor Value Master Fund and Bybrook Capital Master Fund, said the nation is claiming it doesn’t have to pay them if they waited too long to ...

Bloomberg At the Plymouth Energy LLC plant in the heart of the U.S. corn belt — where home-grown fuel from grain was supposed to ease American dependence on foreign oil — every drop of ethanol goes to motorists in Brazil. Like many Midwest distillers, Plymouth’s Merrill, Iowa, plant was built a decade ago for a U.S. market that was importing ...

Kabul / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Kabul on Saturday on an unannounced visit to show support for the Afghan unity government and its attempts to revive peace talks with the Taliban. His visit comes as the extremist group is experiencing a resurgence following the withdrawal of US-led combat troops in 2014, announcing recently it was ...

SAN FRANCISCO/ AP President Barack Obama praised Democratic lawmakers for having his back through some politically tough votes and encouraged supporters to help elect more of them in November. “A Democratic Congress is good for America,” he said Friday. Obama also criticized Senate Republicans for refusing to consider his Supreme Court nominee and said GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and ...