Bloomberg North Korea’s decision to shut the border with China to avoid the coronavirus will set back its nascent economic recovery, renewing pressure on Kim Jong-un to return to nuclear negotiations with Donald Trump. A jump in fuel prices, a dip in port activity and the suspension of train and air links show the early impact as reports emerge of ...

Bloomberg Opposition leader Juan Guaido returned to Venezuela to a chaotic scene at Caracas’s international airport, as President Nicolas Maduro’s loyalists clashed with opposition lawmakers there to greet him. After passing through customs and immigration, Guaido was swarmed by the clashing lawmakers and Maduro backers. He and his travelling entourage were able to leave the airport without being arrested for ...

Bloomberg Matteo Salvini will stand trial for refusing to allow stranded migrants to enter Italy, an outcome he sought as it could bring one of his favourite themes to the forefront of the nation’s political debate. In a preliminary vote, the Rome-based Senate gave the go-ahead to a trial for Salvini, leader of the right-wing League party, after he blocked ...

Every society in the world is going to pay a price for global warming. But it’s the poorest countries and communities who will suffer the most from rising seas and burning lands — and likely also from any drastic measures taken to prevent climate change. The environmental crisis is closely linked to the humanitarian one, and requires the joint action ...

The European Central Bank (ECB) faces many thorny issues as it embarks on its first monetary policy strategy review in nearly two decades. From the setting of the bank’s inflation target, to its role in tackling climate change, the famed diplomatic skills of President Christine Lagarde will be tested. One aspect of the review should prove uncontroversial, however: The ECB ...

In the lumbering takeover battle for HP, Carl Icahn-backed Xerox Holdings Corp. had been wielding plenty of stick, so it was about time for some carrot. What came was more of a crudite, but it might just be the appetizer that HP needs. In the three months since Xerox’s initial bid, Icahn, who’s already the biggest investor in Xerox, took ...

The coronavirus outbreak is already threatening oil markets. The fear of lower demand — from a disease-stricken China and eventually globally as the economic impact widens — has destabilised prices, sending crude to its lowest levels in more than a year. For major oil-producing countries, the declines, coming at a time of curtailed output, threaten economic shocks that if long-lasting ...

Every time a region of the world goes from being poor to being rich one country tends to be responsible for getting the process started. In Europe that was the UK, which was the first to industrialise. In East Asia it was Japan. In West Africa it could be Ghana. Ghana has a number of big advantages over other countries ...

A wealth tax and a ban on hydraulic fracking, both of which have the support of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, would address seemingly separate issues. Yet they stem from a common impulse, one that also undergirds the current trade war: to use the tax code to punish those seen as responsible for unfairness, even if doing so hurts the ...

There’s been a spate of stories about the troubles of high-frequency trading (HFT) firms. This is no temporary downswing. The factors that allowed successful firms to trade actively for a decade with seemingly no losing days are gone and there’s no reason to expect them back. Nevertheless, HFT will be as important a force in the market in the 2020s ...