Barcelona / AFP Barcelona’s leftwing city council charged three Spanish banks over a million euros in fines for keeping four apartments empty for more than two years. The city issued a fine of 315,000 euros ($335,000) for each of the empty apartments, which the banks have had on their books for over two years, and which they have refused ...

FRANKFURT / AP Volkswagen’s namesake brand hopes to bounce back from its diesel emissions scandal with a broad restructuring that will mean more battery-powered cars, digital services such as ride-sharing, and more SUVs for the U.S. market. Herbert Diess, the head of the Volkswagen division, unveiled the company’s Transform 2025 plan at a news conference, saying that “in the coming ...

  San Francisco / AP Facebook has built a tool for geographically censoring posts at the leading social network as it seeks a path back into China, The New York Times has reported. The New York Times cited three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity, as saying that the tool could filter news feeds at the social ...

  San Francisco / AP An industry-backed autonomous car lobbying group has urged US regulators to go further to remove speed bumps than what was laid out in guidelines published two months ago. In a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a ‘Self-Driving Coalition’ founded early this year by Google, Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft hailed the framework ...

  Faye Flam Bloomberg Blind faith in any technology can be dangerous — especially when it comes to areas of forensic science such as DNA fingerprinting. For example, if police have “DNA evidence” against a suspect, most juries will assume that’s proof of guilt. But while the technology for analyzing DNA has become vastly more sensitive since it was first ...

  Hochheim am Main / AFP For 15-year-old Mustafa, the trickiest part about learning German is knowing when to use the articles der, die or das. “And the umlaut,” his classmate Majd reminds him, sending both Syrian teens groaning in mock frustration at the vowel alteration, one of the quirks of German grammar. But they’re not really complaining. Having escaped ...

  Cairo / AFP At a club in downtown Cairo, Ahmed Saleh pumps electronic beats from his laptop as Abdullah Miniawy chants to a cheering crowd, the duo part of a wave of new talent on Egypt’s underground music scene. Emerging artists are creating an eclectic selection of hip-hop, dubstep, electronic and rock music, with some influenced by traditional Egyptian ...

  DUBAI / WAM Lower oil prices have created economic pressure in the members of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) by impacting revenues while also creating opportunities, Abdulla Jassem bin Kalban, MD and CEO of Emirates Global Aluminium(EGA), said and noted that “the greatest success story is industrialisation through the GCC aluminium industry.” “Economic ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM In his capacity as Chairman of the Executive Council of Abu Dhabi, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, issued a resolution reconstituting the board of the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), the emirate’s master developer of major tourism ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM Abu Dhabi General Services Company, Musanada, said the 62-km-long Abu Dhabi- Dubai highway would be ready by next year. The project, being executed by Musanada in co-operation with the Department of Municipal Affairs and Transport, is one of the most important land transport initiatives in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The road is one of ...