Bloomberg First, states across the US ordered utilities to clean up ponds full of toxic coal waste. Now, they’re balking at how much companies want to charge for the work. Officials from Virginia to North Carolina to South Carolina are pushing back on utilities’ plans to charge customers for the costs of shuttering coal-ash ponds, long the primary way of ...

Bloomberg National Grid Plc shares dropped the most in more than a month after it unveiled a decline in adjusted operating profit as the UK network operator rebuffed proposals to nationalise energy assets. The nationalisation proposals “are only going to cause a huge amount of disruption,” Chief Executive Officer John Pettigrew said in an interview. It’s “the last thing you ...

Bloomberg US new-home construction rose for a second month and topped estimates in April in a sign of positive momentum for the housing sector at the start of the second quarter. Residential starts increased 5.7% to a 1.24 million annualised rate after a 1.7% gain in March that was previously reported as a drop, according to government figures. Permits, a ...

Bloomberg For London office developers at least, the Brexit waiting game is over. Developers mostly steered clear of doing new projects on spec in the political upheaval that followed the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Now the surprising resilience of London’s office market, highlighted by technology giants like Alphabet Inc. committing to open new bases in the ...

Bloomberg The Palestinian Authority said it will boycott a conference launching the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan because it’s focused on economic issues rather than the political disputes at the heart of the conflict with Israel. The White House announced that it will hold a conference in Bahrain next month to promote economic development in the Palestinian territories as ...

Bloomberg The US is projecting “strategic confusion” in the South China Sea, the Philippines’ top diplomat said, prompting the Southeast Asian nation to deepen its ties with China. President Rodrigo Duterte prefers China’s offer of loans and investments in the absence of a clearer stance from the US in the disputed sea amid growing rivalry between the two nations, Philippine ...

Bloomberg Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is fighting to preserve her position as Angela Merkel’s heir apparent after her attempts to accelerate the transfer of power backfired. Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced Merkel as head of the Christian Democratic Union in December, embarked on a charm offensive to demonstrate her loyalty to the German chancellor after failing to win support for an effort to persuade ...

Bloomberg Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini’s top aide turned against Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte as tensions within the populist government escalated over immigration before this week’s European vote. Giancarlo Giorgetti, who’s also Cabinet secretary, voiced long-running frustration among lieutenants of the right-wing League party against the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which picked Conte a year ago. “Conte is no longer impartial,” ...

Bloomberg Nigel Farage’s newly-created Brexit Party is threatening to wipe out Theresa May’s Conservatives in the European Parliament elections. One reason behind the Farage surge in the polls may be his dominance of social media, the crucial election cyber war. With a series of polished and professionally produced videos — rapidly cutting from packed rallies with the party’s diverse candidates ...

The Trump administration is going about its trade war with China all wrong. Its strategy and tactics are muddled. If Trump were a general watching the battle unfold, what he’d see is his troops getting slaughtered, while the enemy, though suffering casualties, was holding most of its positions. Trump has two goals, says Bill Reinsch, a trade expert at the ...