Bloomberg Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to cease fighting in Ukraine for 36 hours starting from Friday at noon, Moscow time, but Kyiv quickly dismissed the move as a ploy, unlikely to slow a conflict that’s heading for its second year. The Kremlin said Putin gave the order for Russian Orthodox Christmas. It follows an appeal by the ...

  Bloomberg The Taliban-led administration in Afghanistan signed its first international contract to extract oil from the northern Amu Darya basin as the beleaguered group seeks to increase revenue. The agreement with a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), was inked in Kabul in the presence of Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan, Wang Yu, and the Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister ...

Bloomberg The second anniversary of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol arrives with the building again in turmoil, this time as House Republicans quarrel over a speaker to lead the chamber. The chaos unfolding on the House floor threatens to tarnish the new GOP majority, which voters put back in power less than two years after a ...

  Bloomberg Salesforce Inc division Tableau was hit harder than other units in the company’s largest-ever round of jobs cuts, adding to a major reorganisation that signals the $15.7 billion acquisition hasn’t lived up to expectations. Chief Executive Officer Mark Nelson was ousted from the data analytics division in late December and more senior staff were axed as part of ...

Bloomberg Germany’s biggest services union kicked off wage negotiations with Deutsche Post AG pushing for 15% higher pay for about 160,000 postal workers, a demand the company has turned down as “unrealistic.” The Verdi union reiterated the stipulations first put forward in November before the collective bargaining talks got under way, including a €200 a month bump-up for trainees. The ...

Bloomberg UK house prices are on track to drop 8% this year after declining for four months in a row, one of the nation’s biggest mortgage lenders said. Halifax said its measure of property prices fell 1.5% last month after a 2.4% decline in November. The figures are similar to a reading from Nationwide Building Society, which last week reported ...

  Bloomberg GSK Plc and CureVac NV are planning further patient trials of their messenger RNA vaccines for flu and Covid-19 after promising early results, though the partners still lag behind rivals in the race to expand use of mRNA technology. The partners’ second-generation vaccine candidates showed promising abilities to spur the immune system in early-stage trials, CureVac said. The ...

Bloomberg Euro-area inflation returned to single digits for the first time since August, fuelling hopes that the bloc’s worst-ever spike in consumer prices has peaked. December’s reading came in at 9.2%, Eurostat said, with slower growth in energy costs the only reason for the moderation. The figure reflects slowdowns in Germany, France, Italy and Spain and was less than the ...

  Bloomberg China’s equities are poised to claim back a one-third weighting in a benchmark emerging-markets index, following a sharp outperformance sparked by an easing of strict Covid-19 curbs and a pivot to pro-growth policies. Stocks listed in the mainland and Hong Kong now account for 32.2% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, up from 26.8% in October. The MSCI ...

  Bloomberg European stocks better reflect the coming slide in earnings than pricey US peers, according Citigroup Inc. strategists. A team led by Robert Buckland raised European equities to overweight on Friday, saying valuations already discount a 15% drop in earnings. At the same time, they cut US shares to underweight on the grounds that earnings expectations are still too ...