Bloomberg Ursula von der Leyen’s two-week dash to secure the most powerful policy-making job in the European Union may end with a photo finish. Unexpectedly tapped to head the European Commission after weeks of grueling negotiations by national leaders, the German defense minister and ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel is chasing support among left-leaning factions to put her over the ...

Bloomberg Matteo Salvini, the euroskeptic strongman of Italian politics, can’t seem to shut down a scandal over alleged illegal financing from Russia. The deputy prime minister has been trying to distance himself from a close ally, Gianluca Savoini, who was recorded apparently soliciting illegal party funding from three Russians, according to a report by Buzzfeed News. The story has dominated ...

China’s new GDP numbers show that the world’s second-biggest economy is growing more slowly than at any time since the early 1990s. Chinese leaders know what they need to do to arrest the slide: pump more credit into private companies, which generate the majority of jobs and growth. The fact that growth isn’t picking up regardless of their efforts would ...