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Bloomberg The euro area’s manufacturing slump showed tentative improvement in April as Italy’s contraction slowed markedly and French industry stopped shrinking. A Purchasing Managers’ Index came in at 47.9 in April, up from March and a touch above both economists’ estimates and a previous reading for the month. It was still below the 50 level that would indicate expansion. The ...

Bloomberg The cost of California’s controversial high-speed rail project grew to $79 billion, a development likely to embolden opponents such as President Donald Trump, whose administration is already seeking to cancel and claw back federal grants. The segment already under construction in the state’s agricultural region known as the Central Valley is now expected to cost $12.4 billion, up from ...

Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s first-quarter profit beat expectations and the German carmaker said it’ll meet goals on deliveries and earnings for the year, excluding special items such as legal risks. Excluding legal items of about 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), VW’s operating profit rose to 4.8 billion euros after boosting sales of lucrative sport utility vehicles and favourable exchange rates. The ...

Bloomberg A Blackstone Group LP unit that buys stakes in alternative asset managers is considering a minority investment in BC Partners, according to people familiar with the matter. Discussions between Blac-kstone Strategic Capital Hol-dings and BC are at an early stage and no deal has been reached, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is ...

Bloomberg Israel and Gaza-based fighters are digging in for extended fighting after a barrage of hundreds of rockets and retaliatory airstrikes boiled over into a second day, threatening to undo months of Egyptian-brokered efforts to reach a long-term truce. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he instructed the army to continue its “massive attacks” in Gaza and bolstered forces near the ...

Bloomberg Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido said he cannot rule out the option of the US military working with his nation’s armed forces to oust President Nicolas Maduro, telling the Washington Post that such an offer from the Trump administration would have to be voted on in the parliament he leads. Guaido, who is the National Assembly president and is ...

Bloomberg Kim Jong-un oversaw a live-fire military exercise that potentially included North Korea’s first ballistic missile launch since 2017 — challenging US President Donald Trump’s bottom line in nuclear talks. Kim watched as “large-calibre, long-range multiple-rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons” were fired off North Korea’s eastern coast, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The state media’s ...

Bloomberg Siyabonga Matlala is unequivocal about who he’ll support in South Africa’s May 8 election: the same party he’s backed since apartheid ended a quarter century ago. “I will always vote African National Congress,” the 49-year-old farm labourer said in Fisantekraal, a shantytown on Cape Town’s outskirts. The unwavering loyalty of voters like Matlala has underpinned the ANC’s grip on ...

Bloomberg Santu Adhikari scavenges with scarred hands through the rubble of a Tata Motors factory where he once hoped to work. But the plant was torn down before it was finished, and the 28-year-old now spends his days among its ruins in this field outside Kolkata, hunting for scrap iron to sell. Adhikari blames his grim predicament on one of ...

We live in an age obsessed with economic inequality. There is too much of it, most people seem to agree. After Donald Trump — his personality, behaviour and policies — inequality may well become the dominant issue in the 2020 election. This poses dangers, the most obvious being the tendency to blame the rich and the super-rich for everything that ...