Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. is rolling out a new app that will let drivers find and reserve parking spaces across Japan. The new service, called BLUU Smart Parking, will let drivers find open parking spots, reserve them in advance and pay fees using smartphones. Each location will have cameras and magnetic sensors to monitor cars as they enter and leave, ...

Bloomberg It’s premature to regulate the self-driving vehicles being tested by companies such as General Motors Co. and Waymo LLC, the US government’s top auto safety official said. “At this point the technology is so nascent I don’t think it is appropriate today to regulate this technology,” Heidi King, deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), said. ...

Bloomberg Snaking through Western Australia’s Outback, a driverless train has made the first autonomous delivery of iron ore from a Rio Tinto Group pit to a coastal port, as the No. 2 miner looks to reap the benefits from a $940 million plan deploying the world’s biggest robots. The maiden 280-kilometre journey was completed carrying a cargo of 28,000 metric ...

Bloomberg The European Commission proposed ways to resolve the Trump administration’s concerns over the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in a bid to avert a looming crisis that could undermine the WTO’s ability to arbitrate trade disputes. “The dispute settlement function of the WTO is at grave danger, and swift action by members is needed to preserve it,” ...

Bloomberg Johnson & Johnson (J&J) should ready itself for a flood of new lawsuits after a jury ordered the company to pay $4.69 billion to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in its talc products, legal experts said. There are already more than 9,000 suits claiming talc-based baby powder causes ovarian and asbestos-specific cancers. That number is ...

Bloomberg The US Commerce Department has lifted the ban on American firms selling products to China’s ZTE Corp., removing the final hurdle for the company to start rebuilding its business. The ban was removed after ZTE paid the final tranche of a $1.4 billion penalty by placing $400 million in escrow at a US bank, the department said. That sum ...

Bloomberg Walt Disney Co.’s $71 billion deal with 21st Century Fox Inc. won the endorsement of influential proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co., giving the entertainment giant another edge over rival suitor Comcast Corp. Both firms recommended that Fox shareholders vote in favor of the transaction during a July 27 investor meeting, with Glass Lewis ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp., which has come under fire for a US government contract that was said to involve facial recognition software, said it will more carefully consider contracts in this area and urged lawmakers to regulate the use of such artificial intelligence to prevent abuse. The company, one of the key makers of software capable of recognizing individual faces, said ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. has sent another signal that it’s serious about building its own semiconductors, joining Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Amazon.com Inc. in trying to make its own custom chips. The social-networking giant this month hired Shahriar Rabii to be a vice president and its head of silicon. Rabii previously worked at Google, where he helped lead the ...

Bloomberg France is on a charm offensive. While the UK’s financial-services industry reels from the Prime Minister’s latest Brexit proposal, politicians across the Channel are stepping up their campaign to show firms they have other options. On a two-day visit to the UK, French Deputy Finance Minister Delphine Geny-Stephann met banks, asset managers, private equity and fintech firms in an ...