Bloomberg Micheal Martin took over as Ireland’s new prime minister at the helm of the nation’s first grand coalition, replacing Leo Varadkar in a rotating premiership. Lawmakers voted by 93 votes to 63 to make Martin, 59, prime minister, more than four months after a general election failed to produce a clear winner. His ascent to power came after the ...

Bloomberg Thailand aims to produce its own Covid-19 vaccine rather than waiting to buy inoculations from abroad, and human trials could start as early as October, according to the scientist leading one project. “We learned a very painful lesson during the H1N1 pandemic when the government signed agreements to buy vaccines, but we didn’t get any until the outbreak was ...

Bloomberg Some of Malaysia’s opposition parties will back Shafie Apdal as the candidate to become the nation’s next prime minister, former premier Mahathir Mohamad said. The opposition parties are Warisan, DAP and Amanah, Mahathir said in a statement on Saturday. Shafie was picked as he was among political leaders who opposed wrongdoings perpetrated by the Barisan Nasional government that was ...

Bloomberg However much Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will be able to arrange a trade deal with the European Union by the year-end, firms in Britain are already bracing themselves for the possibility he won’t. Renold Plc, a Manchester-based maker of vehicle chains and gearboxes, is among them. It’s planning to fast-track deliveries to customers in the coming months ...

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc.’s Google will begin paying select media outlets featured in a yet-to-be released news service later this year, a major business shift for the search engine after years of pressure from media companies and regulators. The licensing deals will start in three countries and Google is in talks with publishers in six more, the company said. The service ...

Bloomberg Mark Zuckerberg just became $7.2 billion poorer after a flurry of companies pulled advertising from Facebook Inc.’s network. Shares of the social media company fell 8.3% last week, the most in three months, after Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers, joined other brands in boycotting ads on the social network. Unilever said it would stop spending money with ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc. was sued over a Maryland highway crash last year in which a Model 3’s airbags failed to deploy, leaving a college professor with brain damage. Elon Musk, the company’s co-founder, has touted the Model 3 as the “safest car ever built” with the lowest risk of injury of any vehicle tested by government regulators. The lawyers who ...

Bloomberg Britain said it’s set to relax quarantine requirements for people arriving from countries including France, Greece and Spain. A full list of nations with which the establishment of so-called air bridges will exempt incoming travellers from two weeks of self-isolation will be published next week, the UK government said in a statement. The new regime is be introduced a ...

Bloomberg Blank-check company Graf Industrial Corp. is in talks to merge with Velodyne Lidar Inc., a deal that would take public the maker of sensors used in self-driving vehicles, according to reports. Graf Industrial is working with an adviser to help raise funding for the potential transaction, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t ...

Bloomberg When coronavirus outbreaks forced shutdowns at America’s giant meat plants, it quickly created a bottleneck: Farmers had nowhere to sell their animals, while consumers faced shortages and surging prices. New, smaller slaughterhouses could be the antidote to industry concentration, but it’s no quick fix. Opening a slaughterhouse has plenty of hurdles. The facilities — where animals are killed, butchered ...