North Korea test-fired yet another ballistic missile on Sunday in a stark defiance of United Nations sanctions and US warning that a policy of patience was over. It was a new ground-to-ground medium long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12. It came days after South Korea’s newly elected president Moon Jae-in vowed to engage with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The missile …

At a victory rally for France’s young new President Emmanuel Macron outside the Louvre last week, I was struck by the generational gap between the candidate and his most animated supporters. Most younger people in the crowd looked relieved but far from overjoyed; the most visibly enthusiastic among them were of West African or Arab descent. And when Macron took …

It was fun while it lasted. For a few quarters, it seemed as though the bond-trading business was back in force, with trading volumes accelerating to records on the heels of a flood of new debt sales and more uncertainty about the US economy. Most of the big US banks enjoyed better-than-expected earnings in the first three months of the …