Baja Calana

Michael Horn said he was told about a "possible emissions non-compliance" in the spring of 2014.

The revelation was made in testimony due to be presented to a House committee investigating the scandal on Thursday.

He said he was told after a study by West Virginia University was published.

"I was informed that EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] regulations included various penalties for non-compliance with the emissions standards and that the agencies can conduct engineering tests which could include 'defeat device' testing or analysis," he said.

"I was also informed that the company engineers would work with the agencies to resolve the issue."

Mr Horn said in the written evidence it was not until 3 September this year that Volkswagen told US authorities about the "defeat device" in emissions software in diesel vehicles for the model years 2009 to 2015.

The software allowed a vehicle to recognise whether it was being driven on the road or running in a test laboratory, and turn engine emissions controls on or off.

Mr Horn said the events had been "deeply troubling", adding: "I did not think that something like this was possible at the Volkswagen Group.

"We have broken the trust of our customers, dealerships, and employees, as well as the public and regulators."

He said the company took full responsibility for its actions and was co-operating with all relevant authorities.

"Responsible parties will be identified and held accountable," Mr Horn said.

As well as striving to rebuild the company's reputation, the priority was finding remedies for the three groups of vehicles affected, he said.

The executive will give evidence to the House Energy committee and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations before being questioned by the politicians about the scandal, which affects half a million cars in the US.

Higher capital requirements for its investment bank were partly responsible for the huge impairment charges of €5.8bn.

There was also doubt about the value of its Postbank retail division that Deutsche plans to sell.

Germany's biggest bank also said the dividend for the year could be cut or scrapped.

The group was also setting aside €1.2bn for legal costs.

Deutsche is embroiled in the Libor-rigging scandal and is being investigated by Swiss authorities for suspected price-fixing on the precious metals market.

Analysts had expected a net profit of about €1bn for the third quarter before the unexpected announcement on Wednesday night.

The bank also wrote down by €600m the value of its 20% stake in Hua Xia Bank, which it also plans to sell as it was no longer considered to be strategic.

The writedowns would not affect Deutsche's capital ratio, which stands at an expected 11% for the third quarter when measured by the most stringent test that is part of new European bank rules.

New chief executive John Cryan, who took over in July, is preparing to cut about 23,000 jobs - about a quarter of the workforce - in a bid to reduce costs, it was reported last month.

Deutsche Bank is due to publish its full third-quarter results on 29 October.

Underlying profits for the first half of its financial year were £354m, 55% down on the same period last year, when it made £779m.

Its pre-tax profit was £74m, compared with a loss of £19m for the same period a year ago.

Like-for-like sales were down 1.1% for the UK, but sales volume rose 1.4%.

The number of transactions were also up by 1.5%.

Chief executive Dave Lewis has put pressure on profits by focusing on price cuts and putting more staff in stores, in an effort to attract customers back to Tesco.

He told the BBC he was "quietly confident" about Tesco's turnaround, admitting the group hit a low point at the end of last year.

"We obviously had some issues to deal with, we dealt with them. It meant that in the second half of last year we made no profit whatsoever in the UK.

"So if I compare to the second half of last year, the first half of this year feels like we've made some progress," Mr Lewis said.

"Our sales are growing compared to where they were either a year ago, or indeed in the second half of last year. And we've generated some profit as we rebuild the profitability of Tesco business. But importantly at the same time, improving what it is we're doing for our customers."

Mike Dennis, of global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, described Tesco's interim results as "disappointing".

"The risk now is that Tesco's recovery needs more time, requires more restructuring and asset sales and, with less cash flow, could require a rights issue to lower the indebtedness," he said.

Charles Hanover, investments partner at Dafydd Davies, said: "Tesco did not have a great set of numbers, but they were marginally better than expected.

"In the medium term, it's still a strong business, but in the short term, they still have hurdles to overcome in terms of competition from cheaper rivals."

Tesco has confirmed it will cost it about £500m to meet the government's proposed National Living Wage rate of £9 an hour by 2020.

Mr Lewis said the group already paid more than the £7.20 minimum which is being brought in under the National Living Wage plans next April.

He added that extra staff benefits already brought its hourly rate closer to £9.

Tesco has completed the sale of its Homeplus stores in South Korea, reducing its debt by £4.2bn.

It has decided to keep its Dunnhumby data business which runs its Clubcard loyalty scheme, after failing to attract enough interest in its sale.

In April, Tesco reported the worst results in its history, with a record statutory pre-tax loss of £6.4bn for the year to the end of February.

The supermarket is still under a criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) after it admitted overstating its profits by £326m nearly a year ago.

Mr Lewis declined to comment in a BBC interview on reports that the company was close to striking a deal with the SFO.

Core machinery orders, a leading indicator of capital expenditure, fell by 5.7% in August, compared with expectations for a rise of 3.2%.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index was down 0.49% at 18,234.04 points in mid morning trade.

Investors were also taking in fresh official trade numbers from August.

The country's ministry of finance said Japan posted a current account surplus for the 14th month in a row, but that exports were up 3.1% in August from a year earlier, compared to a rise of 7.6% in July.

The official numbers showed the surplus at 1.65tn yen ($13.8bn) against expectations for about 1.23tn yen.

Meanwhile, global investors were also absorbing a warning from the IMF which said "global financial stability is not yet assured".

A senior IMF official said the nature of the danger had changed. Financial stability in advanced economies has improved, but risks had moved towards emerging economies, Jose Vinals explained.

As mainland Chinese markets reopened after the Golden Week holidays, the Shanghai Composite benchmark index was up 3.3% 3,153.46 in mid-morning trade.

However, Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng was down 0.66% at 22,366.48 points after marking its highest close since 20 August on Wednesday.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.42% at 5,219.90, with shares in mining giant BHP up 2.97%.

In South Korea, the Kospi index was flat, down 0.09% at 2,003.97.

AB InBev on Wednesday raised its offer for SAB to £42.15 a share, having previously bid £38 and £40.

SABMiller closed up 2.4% at £37.08, having risen sharply since InBev first made its move last month.

Any deal between the two would create the world's biggest brewer, worth more than £180bn.

SABMiller said its board had formally considered the new offer, and had "unanimously rejected the proposal as it still very substantially undervalues SABMiller, its unique and unmatched footprint, and its standalone prospects".

AB InBev brews Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona, while SAB brews Peroni and Grolsch, among others.

If a deal does go through, the merged company would produce one-third of the world's beer.

On Tuesday, SAB reported a 9% fall in revenues for the three months to September, which it blamed on weakening emerging market currencies.

Sales volumes were up 2%.

Shares in AB InBev closed up 0.6% in Brussels at €98.65.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.73% at 16,912.2 points.

The price of Brent crude rose as much as 0.8% to $52.73, but later settled at $51.33 a barrel.

All the other main US indexes made similar gains, with the S&P 500 closing up 0.8% at 1,995.8, while the Nasdaq finished 0.9% higher at 4,791.1.

Oil company Chevron was the biggest gainer on the Dow in early trading and ended the day up 1.3%.

The construction equipment maker Caterpillar rose nearly 2% in morning trade, but finished down 0.6%.

Its shares have fallen from about $115 since the beginning of the year after cutting its workforce.

On the wider S&P500, shares in Yum Brands, the owner of KFC and Taco Bell, ended the day down 18.8%.

The company lowered its full-year earnings forecasts, saying it had been hit by slow growth in China and the strength of the dollar.

Leaders of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) initiative promise that the stripped-back versions of the pages will be "lightning fast" to load.

The move has been led by Google, which is providing use of its servers.

Participants believe it may discourage the use of ad-blocking plug-ins.

AMP works by simplifying the technical underpinnings of the pages involved.

Much of the Javascript code used on normal webpages is absent, meaning articles should not only appear faster but use less battery power.

Publishers can continue to tap into the same ad networks as before, but they will not be able to display some types of adverts including pop-ups and "sticky" images that move as users scroll down a page.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Wordpress have said they also intend to make use of the technology.

Facebook is a notable exception. The social network recently launched an alternative programme called Instant Articles, which speeds up the delivery of third-party content by hosting it on its own platform.

News sites will automatically create AMP versions of their stories at the same time as they publish and update the originals.

View an AMP edition of this article

Google intends to scrape these from the web, store them on its cache servers and then serve them to users via its Search and News tools.

Likewise, the social networks involved are also expected to cache and direct users to the AMP articles rather than the originals if users click on relevant links in their apps.

"Today, roughly 40% of users abandon an article if it doesn't load after six seconds," Danny Bernstein, Google's director of product partnerships, told the BBC.

"To be able to pull down an article instantly from Twitter, from Pinterest is a remarkable thing.

"We'll support accelerated mobile pages in search in 2016, but the code is public, so publishers can launch them today, and we expect some smaller apps to be able to render AMP files immediately."