Bloomberg A virtual summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping marked a “good beginning” for the world’s biggest economies to avoid a conflict, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said. “They now have to be followed by concrete discussions that lead in a direction both presidents have affirmed they want to pursue,” the influential US diplomat ...

Bloomberg The Taliban’s top diplomat warned of an Afghan refugee exodus if the US continues to block the release of some $9 billion of the country’s assets. “We are concerned that if the current situation prevails, the Afghan government and people will face problems and will become a cause for mass migration in the region and world,” Amir Khan Muttaqi, ...

Bloomberg Belarus provided shelter for migrants in a logistics hub near the Polish border, offering temporary respite to an increasingly violent standoff on the European Union’s eastern frontier. More than 1,000 people spent the night in a Belarusian warehouse near the Kuznica border crossing, which witnessed the worst clashes since the crisis began, state-owned news agency Belta reported. The move ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s parliament voted yet again to reject a charter overhaul proposed by pro-democracy activists seeking to eliminate the legacy of the 2014 army coup. This was the second time in about a year that the parliament, dominated by royalist lawmakers, pushed back against the rewriting of the military-drafted constitution that anti-government protesters have been pushing for the past 16 ...

Bloomberg Bosnia-Herzegovina must revive its bid to join the European Union to avert the possibility of the ethnically divided country being torn apart, the country’s top international envoy said. Among six EU hopefuls in the Western Balkans region, the country of 3.3 million is among the furthest from accession. The process has stalled since 2016 as its politicians bicker on ...

Bloomberg Real estate investors acquired a record 18% of US homes sold in the third quarter of 2021, wagering $64 billion that home prices and rents will continue to surge. Investors bought more than 90,000 homes in three months through September, up 10% from the prior quarter and 80% from a year earlier, according to a report by Redfin Corp. ...

Bloomberg UK inflation climbed faster than expected to the highest in a decade, heaping pressure on the Bank of England (BOE) to raise interest rates and tightening a squeeze on living standards for households. Consumer prices rise 4.2% from a year ago in October, driven by energy prices and the impact of broad-based supply shortages across the economy. That was the ...

Bloomberg Traffic at Canada’s largest port has been cut off by what local officials are calling the storm of the century, the latest snag to hit the North American supply chain. Days of torrential rain have pelted British Columbia, triggering floods and landslides that have blocked the tracks of the nation’s two major railways and washed away parts of its ...

Bloomberg Euro area inflation will be faster than previously thought this year and next before slipping well below the European Central Bank’s goal in 2023, according to economists polled by Bloomberg. Consumer-price growth will peak at 4.2% late in the fourth quarter, above the previous prediction of 3.6%, according to the median forecast from the survey. A year later, the ...

Bloomberg The European Union (EU) will unveil new rules for companies selling six major commodities in a bid to cut global deforestation. The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, wants the draft regulation to cover soy, beef, palm oil, wood, cocoa and coffee, as well as some derived products such as chocolate, leather and furniture. The plan will require ...