Bloomberg UK retail sales unexpectedly fell in November as Black Friday failed to deliver its usual boost, deepening the cost of the living crisis engulfing the sector. The volume of goods sold in shops and online fell 0.4%, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Sales excluding auto fuel fell 0.3%. Economists expected a 0.3% gain on both measures. ...

  Bloomberg Massmart Holdings Ltd expects more workers at its Makro stores to leave the South African Commercial‚ Catering and Allied Workers’ Union in order to accept the Walmart-owned company’s wage offer. About 800, or 17%, of the Makro Saccawu members have resigned from the union and the firms sees more joining them after receiving “a flurry of calls from ...

  Bloomberg Games Workshop Group Plc will work with Amazon.com Inc to develop film and television productions, with initial work focusing on the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Warhammer 40,000, or 40k as it’s known by fans, is a sci-fi universe set in humanity’s ‘grimdark’ future. It focuses on themes of conflict, galaxy-spanning empire, and fanatic religiosity. The Games Workshop franchise already ...

Bloomberg Germany’s first liquefied natural gas terminal is about to arrive on the country’s north coast, the first of several specialist tankers Berlin is counting on to ease its energy crisis. The Hoegh Esperanza, a floating storage and regasification unit, or FSRU, is scheduled to land at Wilhelmshaven on Saturday, according to the German Economy Ministry. The vessel, which converts ...

Bloomberg Octopus Energy Ltd. signed a power-purchase agreement with Shell Energy Europe Ltd. to buy electricity from what will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm once built. Shell, which has offtake agreements for 20% of the energy produced by the Dogger Bank project off northeast England, will supply Octopus with as much as 2.4 terawatt-hours a year, starting in ...

Bloomberg The UK’s National Grid Plc will run a test of one of the country’s coal-fired power generators that’s being kept in reserve to boost supplies this winter. A Drax Group Plc unit will start up and generate as much as 300 megawatts as the grid operator checks that contingency tools are ready and working if needed. Temperatures plummeted to ...

  Bloomberg Australia passed a law to cap domestic prices of natural gas to limit the impact of soaring global costs on local power bills, ignoring protests from the nation’s powerful energy exporters. At a special sitting, Australia’s parliament passed legislation to cap wholesale gas prices for 12 months. The government also agreed with state and territory leaders to impose ...

  Bloomberg California will spend $2.9 billion building out its network of electric vehicle chargers and hydrogen fueling stations as the state moves to phase out fossil fuel-burning cars and trucks. The California Energy Commission said it would more than double the 80,000 public chargers already deployed across the state and keep the city on track to reach its goal ...

  Bloomberg Scientists in California have made a key breakthrough in nuclear fusion, a technology with the potential to transform the global energy landscape. Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco were able produce a fusion reaction that generated more energy than it consumed. Fusion is the same process that powers stars and ...

  Bloomberg Three US lawmakers questioned Amazon.com Inc’s plans for rebuilding an Illinois warehouse that collapsed in a tornado last year, killing six workers and prompting an investigation by workplace safety regulators. The lawmakers said the e-commerce company should be constructing the warehouse with stronger safety features than existed before the collapse. Amazon is a tenant in the facility owned ...