Bloomberg The German economy is getting some wind in its sails just as the waters are about to get rough. The nation, the first of the world’s biggest developed economies to report on its 2016 performance, probably achieved expansion of 1.8 percent, helped by a pickup toward the end of the year. The German result, forecast by economists surveyed ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s supervisory board is set to sign off on a $4.3 billion settlement of US criminal and civil penalties for rigging diesel-powered cars to cheat on emissions tests, the latest step in the carmaker’s effort to resolve the scandal. The agreement with the US Department of Justice and customs authorities will include a guilty plea, Wolfsburg, Germany-based ...

  Bloomberg UK industrial production rose more than economists forecast in November, led by a surge in oil and gas as a major North Sea field resumed operations. The 2.1 percent increase from October, the biggest in seven months, was more than double the 1 percent predicted by economists in a Bloomberg survey. Manufacturing also rose more than expected, by ...

  Bloomberg Venezuelans have to navigate a labyrinth of lines to buy staples like sugar or aspirin. They’ve gotten used to finding that the store shelves are empty, a frustration that sometimes boils over into looting. So they don’t really need economic data to tell them that 2016 was a terrible year. Still, when and if the numbers do come ...

  Bloomberg Bouygues SA won a construction contract worth at least 1.7 billion euros ($1.8 billion) for the controversial Hinkley Point nuclear plant in the UK that will use the same technology as over-budget and delayed projects in France and Finland. Bouygues will work with UK firm Laing O’Rourke on construction of the buildings that will house the two nuclear ...

  Bloomberg Arctic chill and heavy snowfall left tens of thousands of households in southeastern Europe without electricity as rivers froze over, cables failed and power stations had unplanned outages. From Greece to Hungary, hydroelectric production plummeted as temperatures fell as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) and parts of the Danube river were almost entirely covered ...

  Bloomberg The egg-shaped flying river taxi is gaining support, as SeaBubbles seeks to close its third funding round in under a year and aims to firm up interest from potential customers, including the city of Paris and companies in the San Francisco Bay. To build the first battery-powered bubble-shaped ships that hover a few inches above the water and ...

  Bloomberg Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the main assembler of Apple Inc.’s iPhones, recorded its first annual revenue decline after the global smartphone market went through its worst year on record. The company, also known as Foxconn, posted a 2.8 percent fall in 2016 sales to NT$4.36 trillion ($136.5 billion), it said in a filing to Taiwan’s stock exchange, ...

  Bloomberg Airbus Group SE booked 320 jetliner orders in December alone to rack up 731 sales for the year, extending its backlog and beating Boeing Co. In the last month of 2016 Airbus sold 98 new planes to Iran Air and 72 to Go Airlines India Pvt., while two other transactions saw 132 narrow-bodies purchased by buyers whose identities ...

  Reuters Airbus has finalised an agreement to sell more than 60 jets to Saudi Arabian budget carrier flynas, according to industry sources, a move that could help the European planemaker keep ahead of Boeing in the annual race for new orders. The order from flynas, partly owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed bin Talal’s investment vehicle, is expected ...