Bloomberg China’s state-owned oil majors have stepped up Russian imports in a sign that Beijing is ready to give the go-ahead for more purchases of the country’s crude, according to industry consultants Energy Aspects. PetroChina Co. and CNOOC Ltd. recently resumed imports of waterborne Russian oil, with at least three supertankers of Urals-grade crude signalling China as a destination, ...

Bloomberg Air pollution from coal-fired power plants run by South Africa’s Eskom Holdings SOC risks killing 79,500 people from 2025 until they are due to be shut, according to a study submitted to a panel appointed by the government. The research by the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) assumes that the utility will continue to operate ...

Bloomberg Walt Disney Co. shares rose as much as 7% in early trading after Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger announced plans for a dramatic restructuring of the world’s largest entertainment company, including 7,000 job cuts and $5.5 billion in cost savings. The reductions include plans to cut $3 billion from its budget for movies and TV shows and the rest ...

  Bloomberg German inflation slowed in January to the lowest level in five months thanks to further government aid to ease the burden on households from soaring energy costs. Consumer-price growth eased to 9.2% from 9.6% in December, Germany’s statistics agency said Thursday. Destatis had postponed the data’s scheduled release last week due to processing problems. That delay forced Eurostat ...

  Bloomberg Applications for US unemployment benefits rose for the first time in six weeks but remained historically low, underscoring the resilience of the job market despite mounting economic uncertainty. Initial unemployment claims rose by 13,000 to 196,000 in the week ended Feb. 4, Labor Department data showed Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for ...

  Bloomberg AstraZeneca Plc said it chose Ireland for a new manufacturing facility instead of the UK because of punitive tax rates, raising fresh fears over Britain’s attractiveness to Big Pharma. The drugmaker initially wanted to make the $360 million investment in the UK, but “the tax rate was discouraging,” Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said in a briefing with ...

  Bloomberg UK property surveyors said the housing market settled further into hibernation in January as buyer inquiries, agreed sales and new instructions to sell all fell again. The lackluster activity, driven by higher interest rates and the tightest cost-of-living squeeze in generations, translated into a further drop in prices at the start of the year, the Royal Institution of ...

  Bloomberg Joe Biden hosts his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the White House Friday in a show of support for Brazilian democracy, shaken last month by a right-wing insurrection akin to the invasion of the US Capitol in 2021. Washington and Brasilia organized the meeting with unusual urgency, scheduling it just six weeks after Lula’s inauguration. Yet ...

Bloomberg Romania denied an earlier claim that a Russian missile had crossed into its air space, an incident that risked escalating tensions with Nato as the Kremlin launched a barrage of attacks across Ukraine. Romania’s Defense Ministry said authorities detected an aerial target on Friday, most likely a cruise missile, launched from a Russian warship in the Black Sea near ...

Bloomberg China said it is willing to forge closer ties with Taiwan’s main opposition party, underscoring recent efforts by Beijing to adjust its tough approach to the democratically run island. Song Tao, the head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, made the remarks in a meeting with visiting Kuomintang Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia on Thursday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. ...