Bloomberg Air pollution levels in India’s capital soared off the charts once again as millions of Indians burst fire crackers to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, despite a Supreme Court ban on the sale of fireworks in the region. Already one of the world’s most notoriously polluted mega cities, the capital saw its air quality index (AQI) gradually ...

­­­­­­­­­­­Bloomberg The future of the ride-hailing industry depends on the capricious largesse of two internet billionaires on opposite sides of the globe. Alphabet Inc., led by Larry Page, just backed Lyft Inc., while SoftBank Group Corp. chief Masayoshi Son is set to take a big stake in larger rival Uber Technologies Inc. Alphabet unit CapitalG led a $1 billion investment ...

Bloomberg Johnson & Johnson got a $417 million jury verdict thrown out after a California judge agreed the company didn’t have a duty to warn a woman who has since died that its Baby Powder could cause ovarian cancer. The ruling erased the fourth-largest US jury award of the year. It follows a Missouri appeals court’s ruling earlier in the ...

Bloomberg BMW AG said it was raided by European Union antitrust watchdogs as the EU ramped up a probe into the German car industry following reports that carmakers colluded on technology for decades. News of the search marks the latest development in a probe sparked earlier this year. Daimler AG reported a possible cartel as part of the EU’s leniency ...

Bloomberg Washington’s most powerful trade associations spent more than $30 million on lobbying in the third quarter as Congress ramped up efforts to overhaul of the US tax code. Real estate groups were among those spending heavily, according to lobbying disclosures released for three months. The National Association of Realtors, among Washington’s biggest spenders, doled out $11.1 million during the ...

Bloomberg Technology companies including Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. spent more than $10 million on federal lobbying in the third quarter, as Washington ratcheted up pressure on issues ranging from child trafficking to Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election. Amazon spent $3.41 million—its biggest quarter in at least nine years—on tax policy, cloud security and computing, and others, according ...

Bloomberg Economists are coming full circle on their view of the US economy’s performance last quarter. After cutting growth estimates in early September in anticipation of extensive damage from hurricanes Harvey and Irma, they’ve turned more optimistic as recent data have been fairly decent. Michael Gapen, chief US economist at Barclays Plc, raised his forecast to 2.5 percent, returning it ...

Bloomberg Theresa May left the European summit with warm words on Brexit from her fellow leaders, and the cold fact of a 60 billion euro ($70 billion) divorce bill they still want her to pay. The prime minister gave her clearest signal yet that she’ll cover the cost of the UK’s liabilities when it leaves the bloc, after leaders promised ...

Bloomberg At least 16 Egyptian policemen were killed in clashes with militants as the government struggles to main- tain security while it undertakes economic measures aimed at creating jobs and boosting growth. Another 13 police personnel were injured when a force raiding a militant hideout in the desert southwest of Giza was attacked with heavy weaponry, the Ministry of Interior ...

Bloomberg More than 100 million voters head to the polls on Sunday in an election that may clear the way for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to become Japan’s longest-serving leader. Polls project that Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito will maintain control of parliament while two opposition groups vie for second place. It’s unclear if Abe’s coalition ...