In trademark EU style, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker outlined a vision for the bloc’s future recently by presenting five of them. While some will see an attempt to shape the agenda without taking responsibility, it sounded more like an impatient call for members to find the courage to rally around an actual strategic decision. By striking a neutral ...
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Uber should beware the DUD behind Indian expansion
It’s great that Travis Kalanick is seeking leadership help, though the Uber Technologies Inc. CEO might need advice in another area. Let’s call it DUD — distressed Uber debt. After a dashboard video of Kalanick’s spat with a driver, Fawzi Kamel, went viral last week, the co-founder of the ride-hailing service offered “a profound apology” and promised to change ...
Read More »Trump’s un-American travel ban, part II
President Donald Trump’s latest executive order restricting immigration from several majority-Muslim countries is less sweeping and careless than his last one, which federal courts put on hold last month. But even if it withstands judicial scrutiny, it is still un-American and unwise — and if it doesn’t, the president needs to resist his impulse to lash out. The new ...
Read More »Beijing-Seoul crisis deepens over THAAD
Militaries of US and South Korea announced US missile launchers and some components of the controversial Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense System, or THAAD, arrived in South Korea, a step to deter belligerent North Korea. But the move has not only angered North Korea, which continues to pursue a broad range of nuclear missiles, including those fired from road mobile ...
Read More »â€˜Yingde Group’s deal with PAG will hurt auction’
Bloomberg Yingde Gases Group Co. Chairman Zhao Xiangti’s agreement to sell his stake to a private equity firm undermined the chance of a better deal from other potential buyers, according to an expelled founder fighting to regain management control. The allegation against Zhao is among the latest in the war of words between the three estranged founders of the ...
Read More »Russian economy ‘exits’ recession
Bloomberg Russia has exited recession, with a little help from the boys in uniform, a major statistical revision – and the global oil price. And not just any recession, but its longest in two decades. So what happened? Is the economy really out of the woods? Actually, the contraction ended a few quarters earlier than previously estimated, according to ...
Read More »Comcast buying out Japan park partners
AP Comcast NBCUniversal is paying $2.3 billion to buy out its partners to take full ownership of Universal Studios Japan. The company said Tuesday that it had agreed to purchase the 49 percent stake in the theme park from its partners, including Goldman Sachs, a US hedge fund and an Asian private equity firm. Comcast NBCUniversal says the purchase ...
Read More »US moves parts of controversial missile defense to South Korea
SEOUL / AP US missile launchers and other equipment needed to set up a controversial missile defense system have arrived in South Korea, the U.S. and South Korean militaries said on Tuesday, a day after North Korea test-launched four ballistic missiles into the ocean near Japan. The plans to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, within ...
Read More »EU court : States not obliged to grant visas to refugees
BRUSSELS / AP Europe’s top court has ruled that European Union member states aren’t obliged to grant humanitarian visas to people who want to enter their territory to apply for asylum. The decision announced on Tuesday came after a Belgian court in October ordered the government to give humanitarian visas to a family in war-torn Syria. The European Court ...
Read More »Former EU president says bloc needs more ambition
BRUSSELS / AP Former European Union President Herman van Rompuy says that Europe needs to become “much more ambitious” and that a common foreign policy for the 28-nation bloc is more necessary than ever. The EU is debating how to move forward as Britain prepares to leave and the bloc faces wider tensions. Van Rompuy said Tuesday that “even ...
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