Rules are there to be broken — and that’s official. Spain and Portugal have just escaped punishment for breaking the European Union’s budget-deficit limits. In the EU, such lapses without consequences are not exactly uncommon. In the case of the budget rules, that’s a good thing, because the rules are widely acknowledged to be no good. But here’s a …

  International Monetary Fund had predicted that China’s economy would grow by 6.6% in 2016. And the economists polled by Reuters had anticipated a growth rate of 6.6 percent. But China’s economy narrowly beat estimates with a 6.7 percent expansion on-year in the three months through June, as a string of stimulus measures from the government and the central bank …

  A top Bavarian domestic intelligence official has made tabloid headlines by saying there are “hit squads” and “sleeper cells” among the refugees who have recently arrived in Germany — something right-wing populists have been maintaining all along. Yet the true “sleeper cells” have been here for decades, and that explains why, as Germany and other European countries step up …