Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union suffered a defeat on Sunday in Volkswagen AG’s home state in a contest that underscored her party’s weakened position as she begins potentially laborious talks to form her next national government. Three weeks after Merkel’s CDU won the federal ballot, her party posted its worst result in Lower Saxony since 1959 and ...

Bloomberg Venezuelans began vote in 23 governors races on Sunday, with opponents of President Nicolas Maduro widely expected to deal a blow to the ruling socialist regime by taking leadership in states long dominated by the government. Maduro, heir to the office held by strongman Hugo Chavez, called elections to release tensions after months of bloody protests, and to dispel ...

Bloomberg Austrian voters gave 31-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz a mandate to form a new government in an election on Sunday, setting up a potential coalition with the nationalist Freedom Party, according to projections based on partial returns. Kurz’s People’s Party took as much as 31 percent of the vote, with the Freedom Party polling as much 27.6 percent, according to ...

KOBANI / Reuters Almost three years after Kurdish fighters defeated IS in the Syrian town of Kobani, residents still mourn the dead and feel abandoned by their foreign allies as they struggle to rebuild. IS’s defeat in predominately Kurdish Kobani in early 2015 helped turn the tide against the ultra-militant group and marked the start of a more open US ...

With eyes wide open, Mike Pence eagerly auditioned for the role as Donald Trump’s poodle. Now comfortably leashed, he deserves the degradations that he seems too sycophantic to recognize as such. He did Trump’s adolescent bidding with last Sunday’s pre-planned virtue pageant of scripted indignation — his flight from the predictable sight of players kneeling during the national anthem at ...

India is an emerging market standout. The country was one of only a handful of large economies marked down in forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this week. India’s GDP is expected to rise 6.7% this year, compared with a previous projection of 7.2%. Next year’s estimate was also lowered. Midway through their term, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ...

The state of the union is strong in China. The nation not only holds $1.1 trillion of US debt, it’s also able to issue bonds, in dollars, at the same price as Treasuries. The Ministry of Finance announcement this week that it plans to sell $2 billion of dollar bonds marks China’s first offering in that currency since 2004. The ...

The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan was never the best way to lower US greenhouse-gas emissions. A national tax on carbon dioxide emissions would have been far simpler and more effective. By making sure that all fuels are priced to account for their effects on climate, it would have let the market find the most efficient ways to cut emissions. ...

By accepting an upper limit to the number of immigrants Germany will accept for humanitarian reasons, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made one of her trademark compromises: no one is happy, but her solution will work well enough for now. Forming a governing coalition in the next few months will require a few more of these. Merkel and Bavarian prime minister ...

Oil prices have been subject to big swings this year. Since June, though, fundamental demand factors have been supportive, and with global economic growth firming, the outlook for oil is bright. The significant — and surprising — midyear crude oil price selloff was triggered at the beginning of June by China’s Caixin PMI for May, which showed a contraction in ...