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  Bloomberg Unilever shares fell after saying it will get off to a slow start in 2017, casting gloom over the European consumer-staples industry as the sector’s earnings season kicks off. Fourth-quarter underlying sales rose 2.2 percent, the maker of Dove soap said in a statement, the worst result in two years and below the 2.6 percent gain seen by ...

  Bloomberg Spanish unemployment fell to a seven-year low in the fourth quarter in a boost for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has made job creation the centerpiece of his administration. The jobless rate dropped to 18.6 percent in the three months through December, the National Statistics Office said in Madrid on Thursday. That’s down from 18.9 percent in the ...

  Bloomberg The UK economy is maintaining its stellar performance since the Brexit vote, but the reasons may be cause for concern. Growth beat expectations again in the fourth quarter, coming in at 0.6 percent, but the make-up of the performance hints at ongoing weak links. The expansion is still being almost entirely driven by services and consumer spending, continuing ...

  Bloomberg After at least 12 years together, Alphabet Inc., the parent of Google, won’t be represented by one of Washington’s most prominent lobbying groups, a firm with long-standing ties to the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton. The Podesta Group — whose chairman, Tony Podesta, is a major Democratic fundraiser and the brother of Clinton’s former campaign manager — is ...

  AP Apple Inc. has filed suit in China challenging Qualcomm Inc.’s fees for technology used in smartphones two years after Chinese regulators fined the chipmaker for its licensing practices. Two lawsuits filed by the iPhone maker accuse Qualcomm of abusing its control over essential technology to charge excessive licensing fees, a Beijing court said on its microblog. It said ...

  Bloomberg Next time you’re searching for a new job, look to Siri for inspiration. Coders who can help machines communicate with people are in high demand. Software engineers who program computers to understand human speech saw US demand for their labor grow faster than workers with any other skill, according to data from last quarter compiled by Upwork, a ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP Facebook is updating its “trending” feature that highlights hot topics on its social networking site, part of its effort to root out the kind of fake news stories that critics contend helped Donald Trump become president. With the changes announced, Facebook’s trending list will consist of topics being covered by several publishers. Before, it focused ...

  Bloomberg Johnson & Johnson agreed to buy Actelion Ltd. for $30 billion and spin off the Swiss drugmaker’s research and development operations, clinching its largest deal ever to become a leader in medicines for a rare type of high blood pressure. J&J, already the world’s biggest maker of health-care products, is fulfilling its goal of gaining a new drug ...

  Bloomberg To convince investors to finance a pan-European war against Uber Technologies Inc., a French ride-hailing app 50 times smaller has a one-word pitch: profit. Chauffeur-Prive is near closing a 50-million-euro ($53 million) fundraising round to expand out of Paris into the rest of Europe, with the promise it can extend a five-year streak of growth while turning a ...

  Bloomberg Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV expects debt to fall by at least 45 percent this year as the Italian-American carmaker enters the final stretch of a plan to turn liabilities into cash by selling more expensive autos. The stock jumped. Net industrial debt will narrow to less than 2.5 billion euros ($2.7 billion) this year from 4.6 billion euros ...