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  Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP is no longer in talks to buy a $5 billion stake in assets owned by Energy Transfer Partners LP, people with knowledge of the matter said. The discussions fell through after the Wall Street Journal reported them last month, said one of the people, who asked not to identified because the information is private. The ...

  Bloomberg Indian real-estate websites PropTiger.com and Housing.com are merging to create the country’s top portal for residential listings and property services, as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. boosts its investment in the growing sector while Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. scales back. REA Group Ltd., an Australian real-estate company controlled by News Corp., is putting $50 million into the new ...

  Bloomberg China’s producer price index rose at the fastest pace in more than five years in December as the factory to the world swings from being a drag on global inflation to another potential force pushing prices higher. PPI jumped 5.5 percent last month from a year earlier, compared to the median estimate of 4.6 percent in a Bloomberg ...

  BEIJING/ AP China’s top economic planner pledged on Tuesday to continue cutting steel and coal production that have been a source of trade friction with many countries. China reached targets for cuts in production capacity last year, Xu Shaoshi, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said, adding that hundreds of thousands of steel and coal workers have ...

    BLOOMBERG India’s automobile sales fell the most in 16 years last month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unprecedented clampdown on cash prompted consumers to delay their purchases of cars, motorcycles and trucks. Automobile sales fell 19 percent to 1.2 million units in December, the biggest drop since the same month in 2000, according to data released by the ...

  Bloomberg Consumers in China bought passenger vehicles at the fastest pace in three years to take advantage of a tax cut on small-engine automobiles, boosting deliveries of automakers from General Motors Co. to Great Wall Motor Co. Dealerships sold 23.9 million cars, sports utility and multipurpose vehicles last year, capping a 15.9 percent gain, according to data released Tuesday ...

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. bet early on virtual reality, buying Oculus VR 2 1/2 years ago to get its groundbreaking headset. Now it’s fighting claims that the Oculus Rift was built with stolen technology and promoted with a false origin story about a young entrepreneur tinkering in his parents’ garage. What started as a falling out between tech geeks has ...

  Bloomberg Optimism among America’s small businesses soared in December by the most since 1980 as expectations about the economy’s prospects improved dramatically in the aftermath of the presidential election. The National Federation of Independent Business’s index jumped 7.4 points last month to 105.8, the highest since the end of 2004, from 98.4. While seven of the 10 components increased ...

  Bloomberg Google, Facebook Inc. and other Internet companies will be covered by strict new European Union privacy rules that seek to limit access to consumers’ data. The EU proposed in a draft law unveiled in Brussels Tuesday giving online users more control of their settings and limiting the “overload of consent requests” for cookies people encounter when browsing the ...

  Bloomberg BMW lost its crown as the world’s biggest luxury-car brand to Mercedes-Benz, ending its reign after more than a decade amid a cluttered lineup of aging models. The Munich-based manufacturer sold 80,000 fewer cars last year than the Daimler AG brand, which drew younger buyers with sporty redesigns and a bigger array of increasingly popular SUVs. A rebound ...