Bloomberg The UK economy failed to grow in January, adding to the case for the Bank of England’s emergency rate cut on Wednesday. The figures suggest the pickup seen after Boris Johnson’s election win proved short-lived, with momentum waning even before fears about the coronavirus took hold in February. Gross domestic product was unchanged from December, when it grew 0.3%, ...

Bloomberg Coronavirus-fuelled market turmoil has led AEW SA, a real estate investment manager backed by Natixis SA, to push back a planned 900 million-euro ($1 billion) European property sale. The fund manager is trying to assess the impact of the outbreak on real estate markets before moving ahead, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. AEW had already ...

Bloomberg A diplomatic spat has erupted between Germany and neighbours Switzerland and Austria over a decision last week by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to ban most exports of protective medical equipment. Switzerland has called in the German ambassador to complain about the decision to block a shipment of 240,000 face masks, while Austria’s economy minister demanded her German counterpart order ...

Bloomberg Both US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping have good reasons to deflect political blame for the coronavirus outbreak. And that has both of them zeroing in on the pathogen’s name. As the disease formally designated as Covid-19 expands across the US, Trump and other top Republicans have sought to highlight the outbreak’s foreign origin and even use ...

Bloomberg A UK minister of health, Nadine Dorries, has become the first British member of parliament to test positive for coronavirus. She’s reported to have attended a reception with Prime Minister Boris Johnson the day before she fell ill, and had met hundreds of people in Parliament that week. The Times reported she had fallen ill on March 6 and ...

Bloomberg Vladimir Putin set the stage to stay on as Russia’s president for potentially another 16 years, reversing his past opposition to scrapping term limits so that he — and only he — can continue to rule the country. “I fully recognise my own personal responsibility towards the citizens of this country,” Putin said in an unscheduled speech before the ...

Bloomberg Venezuelan police detained an opposition lawmaker hours after Juan Guaido supporters in Caracas were met with tear gas during a protest against Nicolas Maduro’s regime. Masked FAES officers forcibly removed Renzo Prieto from a hotel in eastern Caracas in the late afternoon, according to Guaido’s press office. Two other lawmakers, Zandra Castillo and Angel Torres, were released after being ...

Bloomberg Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden have cancelled planned rallies in Cleveland, Ohio amid concerns about coronavirus spreading at public events and suggested the campaigns might suspend large gatherings. But President Donald Trump’s campaign took a different tack, announcing that he would attend a ‘Catholics for Trump’ coalition event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 19, that “will bring together Catholics ...

We are edging towards a soak-the-rich economy. To borrow from Winston Churchill: Rarely would so much be taken from so few. To be sure, the United States is undertaxed in the sense that people want more government spending than they are willing to pay for with higher taxes. Here are the numbers. In 2019, federal taxes equaled 16% of the ...

Americans have become polarised over something other than politics. We’re now divided into those who are washing our hands more carefully and more often, but otherwise living as usual, and those who are buying a year’s supply of toilet paper at Costco and, at the extreme end, ordering $400 bottles of now-rare Purell. For every Covid-19 headline urging “don’t panic,” ...