Bloomberg Linde AG and Praxair Inc. are poised to get a so-called statement of objections listing potential reasons for the European Union’s antitrust regulator to block their proposed $46 billion merger, according to three people familiar with the EU review. Such a filing — common in complex merger probes — would lay out precise concerns with the transaction combining the ...

Bloomberg Daimler AG and Deutsche Telekom AG agreed to a 3.2 billion-euro ($3.8 billion) deal with the German government, ending a spat over the clunky start of a system to collect truck tolls that had become one of the country’s longest running legal disputes. The agreement involves a cash payment of 1.1 billion euros, which will be split evenly between ...

Bloomberg As Donald Trump shakes up the global order, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is being pushed closer toward a more predictable partner in Moscow. When President Vladimir Putin hosted Merkel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday, both leaders did their best to keep tensions in the background compared with a year ago, when they clashed over Ukraine ...

Bloomberg The Democratic National Committee is seeking a court order that would essentially force President Donald Trump’s administration to aid the group’s lawsuit accusing Russia of interfering in the 2016 election. Enlisting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo through a provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act “is the only means available to the plaintiff” to formally serve Russia with the ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Theresa May is preparing the ground to keep the UK inside the European Union’s core trade rules for years after Brexit, a move that risks a rebellion from euroskeptics who could force her out. May’s inner Cabinet has agreed a plan to keep the UK aligned with the EU’s tariff rules for longer as a last resort ...

Bloomberg The three-day-old government of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party failed to prove its majority in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, dealing a blow to PM Narendra Modi’s plan to expand his party’s influence outside its strongholds ahead of a federal poll in 2019. The development sets the stage for the formation of a new coalition government of regional Janata ...

Bloomberg All of Italy gets to have its say on the populist coalition’s policy program this weekend, when the League, one of two parties involved, opens up ad-hoc polling stations in towns and cities across the country. Matteo Salvini, the party’s 45-year-old leader, is offering Italians a chance to vote on the deal on Saturday and on Sunday, though his ...

Bloomberg A Congolese health official said two more cases of Ebola have been identified in Mbandaka in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo. There are now three confirmed cases of the disease in the city, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director-general of the National Institute for Biomedical Research, said by phone Friday from the capital, Kinshasa. Health Ministry spokeswoman Jessica Ilunga said she couldn’t ...

There’s a common misperception that the US is the land of small government, where the poor receive little assistance. To many on the left, the US is a uniquely bad actor, eschewing the enlightened social democracy of Western Europe and leaving the economically unfortunate to suffer. Those on the right tend to take a more positive view of the same ...

Other than the embarrassment of asking the country’s second-largest state-run lender to, well, stop lending, there’s no other reason why India should allow Punjab National Bank (PNB) to advance even one rupee to anybody except the government. The financial institution, at the epicenter of a massive fraud allegedly committed by uncle-nephew jeweler duo Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi, last week ...