Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. will invest an unspecified amount in Grab as the ride-hailing giant adopts the US company’s Azure as its preferred platform for cloud services. Under the five-year deal, the companies will collaborate on technologies including big data, artificial intelligence and connected car platforms. Grab counts Amazon Web Services among its existing cloud suppliers and has worked in the ...

Bloomberg Secretary of State Michael Pompeo flew to Asia to shore up a weakening sanctions regime on North Korea, nail down a date for a future summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un and assuage Chinese officials days after Vice President Mike Pence lambasted their country. Things didn’t go as planned. Instead, Pompeo found himself facing the limits of his ...

Bloomberg Nikki Haley will leave her job as US ambassador to the United Nations at the end of the year, President Donald Trump said at the White House on Tuesday. Trump said Haley told him six months ago she wanted a break after spending two years in the post. “She’s done a fantastic job and we’ve done a fantastic job ...

Bloomberg Emmanuel Macron is keeping France in the dark about how extensive a cabinet overhaul he’s planning to give a new impulse to his presidency. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe spent almost two hours meeting with President Macron on Tuesday morning, with no announcement made afterwards. Philippe had been expected to tender his gove- rnment’s resignation, with the list of new ...

Bloomberg The Republic of Macedonia’s government moved forward towards changing the name of the country to clear the path to membership in NATO and the European Union, despite vows from the opposition nationalists that they’ll bloc the switch. The former Yugoslav state is at the center of the struggle between Russia and the West for sway over Europe’s most volatile ...

Bloomberg France’s European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau accused nationalist leaders of being in thrall to the US and Russia, as she sought to turn the tide on the populist wave surging across Europe. Loiseau cited former White House strategist Steve Bannon as she suggested that Europe’s nationalists are open to undue foreign influence, saying they “have found their masters in ...

Should we just give up now? The world’s electrical utilities need to reduce coal consumption by at least 60 percent over the two decades through 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change that could occur with more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced on Monday. Such a ...

I suspect that long-time watchers of China’s reform efforts may not be that enthusiastic about yesterday’s decision by the country’s central bank to cut the required reserve ratios for banks. Although understandable as a short-term response to a more challenging growth environment, it risks being another attempt to crank up an old economic- model whose effectiveness has declined and whose ...

There were howls of outrage when the Labour Party said earlier this year that it would force the Bank of England (BOE) to set a target for productivity if it won power. The announcement by the Conservative government that Andy Haldane, the central bank’s chief economist, will head a new Industrial Strategy Council is similarly distasteful. The new body “has ...

In signing the Paris climate agreement, the world’s governments pledged to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Leaving aside that their collective efforts and plans to curb greenhouse gases are not enough to accomplish that — the goal itself turns out to be too modest to prevent disastrous warming. Today’s report from the United ...