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Bloomberg UK government borrowing surged in the first four months of the fiscal year, a reminder of the vulnerability of the public finances as Britain braces for a no-deal Brexit. The budget deficit between April and July stood at 16 billion pounds ($19.4 billion), 60% more than the same period last year, Office for National Statistics figures published on Wednesday ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday agreed to abolish a tax that was used to help finance reunification for all but the very wealthy. From 2021, the so-called “Solidarity Surcharge” will be eliminated for 90% of those currently paying it and another 6.5% will receive partial relief, the finance ministry said in a statement. As a result, expected revenue ...

Bloomberg Nordic leaders said they would seek a common stance on climate talks after a summit in Iceland that was attended by German Prime Minister Angela Merkel. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the region had the responsibility of making sure that it becomes the more environmentally sustainable in the world, while her Swedish colleague Stefan Lofven said it was ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is making good on a promise the company made following last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal: It finally finished a feature that will let users separate their internet browsing history from their personal profiles. The move is a risk for the world’s largest social media company because it could make Facebook advertising less accurate and potentially less valuable ...

Bloomberg Argentina promised to use “all available tools” to stabilise the peso after last week’s rout, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it is sending a delegation to visit the country “soon.” The government is working to keep the currency within last week’s range of 45.2 to 60.4 pesos per dollar, newly sworn-in Economy Minister Hernan Lacunza said in ...

Bloomberg China vowed retaliation against a proposed $8 billion US sale of advanced fighter jets to Taiwan, threatening to impose sanctions on American firms participating in such a deal. “China will take all necessary measures to defend its own interests, including imposing sanctions on the US companies involved in the arm sales,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at ...

Bloomberg Venezuelan officials have been holding “secret meetings” with “high-ranking” US counterparts for months, president Nicolas Maduro said. “There have been contacts with high-ranking US government officials in the Trump administration and my government under my express authorisation to try resolving the conflict,” Maduro said in a speech broadcast on state television. Maduro said he was ready to speak directly ...

Bloomberg China confirmed it has detained a UK consulate worker from Hong Kong, underscoring security fears of people traveling between the Asian financial hub and the mainland as Beijing struggles to contain weeks of unrest. China’s foreign ministry said that the consulate worker, Simon Cheng, 28, was being held under in administrative detention in the adjacent city of Shenzhen on ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump cancelled a state visit to Denmark after his offer to buy Greenland was met first with bemusement, then flat refusal. Anger followed, and even Queen Margrethe II was drawn into the fray. Trump had been due to make his first visit to Denmark, a founding member of NATO and a US ally in the Iraq war, ...

Bloomberg The shroud of mystery surrounding Russia’s latest deadly nuclear accident will become increasingly difficult to maintain once the data starts to roll in. That’s the lesson of a team of scientists who showed last month — days before the explosion that killed five Russians — that “a sizeable, yet undeclared nuclear accident” had occurred two years earlier in Russia, ...