Bloomberg French President Emmanuel Macron rebuffed accusations that he’s handling the Covid-19 crisis in an authoritarian way on Wednesday and renewed his call for people to get vaccinated to beat the pandemic. “Never before in our history was a crisis of such magnitude fought in such a democratic way,” Macron said at the beginning of a virtual defense cabinet meeting ...

Bloomberg Afghanistan’s acting finance minister Khalid Payenda has resigned and left the country after the Taliban captured key customs posts bleeding the administration of revenue, reinforcing the government’s isolation as the extremists make swift gains. Payenda has “resigned and left the country because Afghanistan is grappling with declining revenues after the takeover of the custom posts,” Finance Ministry spokesman Mohammad ...

Bloomberg Senate Democrats took a major step towards the biggest expansion in decades of federal efforts to reduce poverty, care for the elderly and protect the environment, passing a $3.5 trillion budget framework that opens the way for President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. The party-line 50-49 vote marks an abrupt reversal from the tax-cutting philosophy of Republicans when they controlled ...

Bloomberg European Sustainable Growth Acquisition Corp is buying Germany’s ADS-TEC Energy GmbH, which creates technology used for electric charging platforms, in a deal that will give the combined firm a market value of about $580 million. The transaction with the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, includes a $156 million private investment in public equity, or PIPE, with investors such ...

Bloomberg Germany will expand Covid-19 testing requirements for non-vaccinated people and end free tests to prod more residents to roll up their sleeves. Starting later this month, negative results will be required for people who haven’t been inoculated or can show they’ve recovered from the disease to eat in restaurants, go to the hairdresser and attend sporting events. The government ...

Bloomberg Coinbase Global Inc shares were little changed in extended trading after the largest US cryptocurrency exchange noted that customer usage slowed at the start of the current quarter. The warning came while the company said second-quarter profit jumped to $1.6 billion from $32 million a year earlier. Revenue climbed to $2 billion from $178 million. Analysts polled by Bloomberg ...

Bloomberg Rivian Automotive Inc, the electric-vehicle startup backed by Amazon.com Inc, is in talks to invest at least $5 billion to build a factory near Fort Worth, Texas, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News. The factory — codenamed “Project Tera” according to the document — will be able to produce 200,000 vehicles a year, and will create at ...

Bloomberg US equity futures and Treasuries edged lower, while the dollar strengthened on Wednesday ahead of a key report on American inflation that will be parsed by traders for clues on the direction of central-bank policy. Contracts on the S&P 500 Index slipped from a record ahead of data out on Wednesday showing US consumer prices probably jumped again in ...

Bloomberg New measures proposed by Asia’s oldest bourse to curb “excessive price movements” in so-called penny stocks pose hurdles for the millions of newbie traders who have thronged to that segment of India’s $3.1 trillion equity market. BSE Ltd will introduce price bands on the movement of certain stocks based on their performance over a period of six months, one ...

Bloomberg Chinese internet stocks rallied in Hong Kong after some brokers started to turn optimistic on the sector and said investors were making an attempt to find a bottom in prices after recent selloff. The Hang Seng Tech Index rose 2.5%, the most in nearly two weeks, to snap a three-day losing streak. The sector bellwether Tencent Holdings Ltd jumped ...