Bloomberg Italian voters rallied behind the center-right in local elections as its leader, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, left a boat with over 600 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean. As Italy’s populist government dials back its challenge to the European Union’s budget rules, Salvini is dramatising his commitment to turning the tide on immigration. Salvini visited Como in northern Italy to ...

Bloomberg Malaysia has discovered “many mini 1MDBs” in its campaign to root out corruption in the state, according to a top adviser to PM Mahathir Mohamad, signaling the wrongdoing unearthed at the debt-ridden fund may be more widespread. Daim Zainuddin, 80, who was appointed by Mahathir to head up a Council of Eminent Persons to advise the new government on ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she favours a US-Russian summit, seeking to point global diplomacy forward after a tumultuous meeting of Group of Seven leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t invited to the G-7 summit in Canada, although US President Donald Trump suggested he be readmitted. In an echo of Cold War meetings on neutral ground, Austria is encouraging ...

Bloomberg Serbia’s government mustn’t send conflicting signals about its strategic goal of joining the European Union rather than aligning with Russia, Deputy Premier Zorana Mihajlovic said in a thinly veiled rebuke of her party’s ruling partners. “We who lead Serbia should more clearly say so, to avoid the situations which in the morning we want to be in the EU, ...

The trustees for Social Security and Medicare issued their annual reports last week. This is cause for discouragement because it reminds us how much we’ve mortgaged the country’s future to spending for older Americans. Already, Social Security and Medicare constituted 42 percent of federal spending in 2017, say the trustees. If they had included Medicaid, the share would have exceeded ...

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has nearly $1.5 trillion in assets and a legion of external asset managers running its portfolio. The GPIF sees itself as a ‘super-long-term investor’ with the goal of a century or more of sustainable investment and outflows. Managing money for that long is a matter of stewardship, not just picking assets — and in ...

If Germany has too many banks and beleaguered lender Deutsche Bank AG is too reliant on its trading businesses, wouldn’t a merger with rival Commerzbank AG fix two issues at once? Probably — but for Deutsche’s chairman to bring it up now is as ill-timed as cracking a joke at a funeral. His bank needs to address its problems first ...

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reportedly once said that he enjoyed trying to change the course of history, even if that meant “throwing rocks into glass houses and listening to the shattering of glass.” So it’s no wonder he thinks that US President Donald Trump would be a great Brexit leader. “Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Britain’s chief diplomat told a ...

Italy’s new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is eager to talk to the European Commission about running a higher deficit, he told his country’s parliament this week. He’s about to find out that the rest of the EU isn’t ready to listen. Brussels is ready to take the same hard-line approach with Rome’s populist rulers as it has with Britain’s Brexit ...

For years now, it’s been a common view in the retail world that a win for Amazon.com Inc. is a loss for some old-school retailers. But these days, that’s not necessarily the case. Traditional brick-and mortar chains are starting to strike some innovative partnerships with their arch-competitor, turning to unconventional arrangements in the hopes of getting more shoppers back into ...