Russia was one of the best trades of 2016 by a country mile. A strengthening ruble supercharged foreign interest in domestic Russian government bonds, pushing yields down to around 8 percent from 12 percent in mid-2015. Contrary to appearances, there’s still some room to run. There’s a realistic chance that inflation will cool to the Russian central bank’s 4 ...

  Not surprisingly for a president whose slogan is “America First,” Donald Trump has expressed deep skepticism about the United Nations. Nevertheless, his appointment of a skilled and popular politician as the new US permanent representative stands to help make the UN a more effective forum for advancing US interests. It will be South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s job to ...

  British Prime Minister Theresa May met US President Donald Trump on Friday to garner support as UK is poised to leave European Union. May fared well in meeting with Trump, who promised her what the former demanded. She returns with Trump’s promise to seek an early trade deal with Britain once it leaves the European Union, a commitment from ...

  Just a few years ago, many were proclaiming the decline of behavioural economics. In 2009, the well-known game theorist David Levine delivered a lecture called “Is Behavioural Economics Doomed?,” in which he casts doubt on some prominent behavioural theories. In a few fields, such as finance, behavioural ideas have gone mainstream; in others, like game theory, interest is slowly ...

  Ebay Inc. has managed to right the ship. Now it’s time to get sailing.Shares in the e-commerce company rose 9 percent in after-hours trading as investors cheered a fourth-consecutive quarter of sales increases. Maintaining a full year of gains helped quiet concerns that without PayPal Holdings Inc., the subsidiary it split from in 2015, eBay would be left for ...

  As UK Prime Minister Theresa May tries to show the world that Brexit won’t be a disaster, it’s useful to consider what the UK can actually offer the world once it’s deprived of its European Union crutches. Perhaps its eventual role is to be the world’s quirky creative hub: That core competence won’t go away with Brexit, and it ...

  BEIJING / AP China is beefing up a campaign to root out services that circumvent the government’s internet censorship with a 14-month-long “clean-up” of the internet industry. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a directive that it forbids the operation of virtual private networks (VPNs) or leased lines that allow users and businesses to access blocked ...

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. hired Hugo Barra to lead its virtual reality efforts just days after he quit Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. Barra, who led Xiaomi’s international expansion, will now take on a different challenge as vice president of virtual reality. He will need to navigate the competitive and young market, where Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Gear products have ...

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. is set to join the Partnership on AI, an artificial intelligence research group that includes Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Apple’s admission into the group could be announced as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the situation. Representatives at Apple and the Partnership on AI declined to comment. ...

  Bloomberg You need two primary pieces of information from a dive computer: your depth and how much time you have left before too much nitrogen gives you the bends. More advanced gadgets can tell you about the temperature of the water and the quality of the air left in your tank and may come with a submersible pressure gauge ...