Carnival Corporation & plc announced that its Italian brand, Costa Cruises, has placed orders for two new cruise ships powered by liquefied natural gas as part of an agreement with Meyer Werft to build four next-generation cruise ships with the largest guest capacity in the world.
Factory activity in the world's second largest economy, China, shrank the most in two years in July as new orders fell more than expected. The private Caixin/Markit manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) dropped to 47.8 in July from 49.4 in the previous month.
Pope Francis will be visiting the United States next September, where he will address the United States congress, the United Nations General Assembly and attend the Family Congress to be held in Philadelphia.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called a parliamentary election for Oct. 19, kicking off a marathon 11-week campaign likely to focus on a stubbornly sluggish economy and his decade in power. Polls indicate Harper's right-of-center Conservative Party, which has been in office since 2006, could well lose its majority in the House of Commons.
Switzerland's central bank announced Friday it had suffered a loss of 50.1 billion francs ($51 billion, 47 billion Euros) in the first half of the year, down on the 16.1 billion francs in profit logged for the same period a year earlier.
Canada has given oil sands a dirty reputation, but a breakthrough, commercially viable technology has caught the eye of a former Exxon Mobil president who is putting it to use to clean up Utah's billions of barrels of oil sands.
Thirteen additional countries need to ratify an agreement brokered by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to combat illegal fishing by blocking ports to ships known or believed to be carrying illicit catches that account for more than 15% of global output, the agency said today.
Shipping group CMA CGM has taken delivery of the new build box ship CMA CGM Vasco de Gama on July 27. Built by China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), the 18,000 TEUs vessel, with its 399 meters length and 54 meters width, is the largest ship in the CMA CGM fleet and the largest containership ever built in a Chinese shipyard.
The UK has become Santander's most profitable market, generating just over a fifth of the bank's profits in the first half of 2015. Pre-tax profits in the UK rose £74m to £928m, while revenues were up 5%. The results eclipsed the €1bn (£700m) posted by the Spanish bank's Brazilian operation, which saw its revenues jump by 9%.
Former BBC' Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have signed up to present a new show on Amazon's streaming video service. The trio will front three series of a new motoring program for Amazon Prime, with the first season to be made available worldwide in 2016.