Bloomberg JD.com Inc, China’s second-biggest online retailer, will become the country’s first virtual mall to use digital yuan, the cryptocurrency backed by the central bank. JD Digits, the e-commerce giant’s fintech affiliate, will launch a pilot program this month, and customers will pay for certain items with digital yuan, it said on its official WeChat account. About 100,000 digital cash …

Bloomberg Car-sharing startup Turo Inc is returning to New York, seven years after leaving the state that was once its biggest market over a dispute with regulators about insurance rules. Turo, which allows vehicle owners to put their personal cars up for daily rentals through its website and smartphone app, aims to compete with traditional offerings from Avis Budget Group …

Bloomberg Google is set to win conditional European Union (EU) approval for its $2.1 billion takeover of health tracker Fitbit Inc this month, people familiar with the discussions said. The deal could be approved as soon as next week after national competition authorities give their opinion, said the people who asked not to be named because the procedure isn’t public. …

GENEVA / WAM The UN refugee Agency has commended the UAE for supporting humanitarian efforts to airlift emergency aid and supplies to Ethiopian refugees in Sudan. Spokesperson of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Babar Baloch, told a news briefing in Geneva that a plane carrying 32 tons of UNHCR emergency aid from global stockpile in Dubai landed …

Bloomberg Opec ministers started hashing out the size of the cartel’s oil-production cuts for next year, as the group’s president called for caution in a fragile market. The coalition that pumps half the world’s crude is debating whether to maintain supply at current levels or increase it as planned in January. Some members are concerned that global markets remain too …

TOKYO / WAM Japan imported from the United Arab Emirates 21.850 million barrels of crude oil in October 2020, data released by the Agency of Energy and Natural Resource in Tokyo showed. This accounts for 31.2 percent of Japan’s total crude imports, the agency that belong to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said. Saudi Arabia provided 29.761 mmb, …

Bloomberg Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, South Africa’s biggest polluter, said it will be charged with supplying misleading information to a government air quality officer, exceeding emission limits at the Kendal coal-fired power plant and breaching its Atmospheric Emission License. The 4,116-megawatt facility had its pollution abatement equipment damaged during a 2018 strike and has since been the subject of a …

Bloomberg National Grid Plc is starting a hydrogen research facility to test how Britain’s gas transmission network can be used to transport hydrogen to heat homes or applied to industry. The 12.7 million-pound ($17 million) project will receive almost three quarters of its funding from Ofgem as part of the energy regulator’s Network Innovation Competition, announced on Monday, with the …

Bloomberg China’s third-biggest oil company faces a US blacklist, which could spur major outflows from its Hong Kong-listed unit, after years of involvement in offshore drilling in disputed South China Sea waters. China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), the nation’s main deepwater explorer, is among four companies to be added to a list of firms owned or controlled by the …

Bloomberg Construction work on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea will resume this week, despite US sanctions designed to end the pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Germany. Pipelaying on the 9.5 billion-euro ($11.2 billion) link will restart on December 5 after being halted for a year because of the sanctions, Nord Stream 2 company …