Bloomberg French labor unions are leading a second day of mass strikes and protests on Tuesday against raising the retirement age in a test of the momentum driving defiance to Emmanuel Macron’s signature economic reform. The country’s rail operator, SNCF, expects only one-third of high-speed TGVs to run and urged people to work from home. Subway and commuter trains serving ...

Bloomberg The US and South Korea are planning to step up the scale of their joint military exercises, a move that has in the past prompted threats and weapons tests by North Korea. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean counterpart Lee Jong-sup agreed in talks Tuesday in Seoul to “further expand and bolster the level and scale of ...

Bloomberg China lashed out at the Czech Republic after incoming President Petr Pavel spoke with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen, saying the move amounted to “serious interference” in its affairs. “This is a blatant violation of the Czech Republic’s political commitment to the one-China principle,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Tuesday at a regular press briefing in Beijing, referring to ...

  Bloomberg China’s Coast Guard maintained near-daily patrols at key features across the disputed South China Sea last year, ramping up its presence as tensions over the waterway with Southeast Asian neighbors remain high, new tracking data shows. Patrols in the waters surrounding the Vanguard Bank off Vietnam, an area known for its oil and gas reserves and the site ...

  Bloomberg Hungary’s nationalist government ousted hundreds of senior military leaders in the most far-reaching overhaul of the central European nation’s army since it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The dismissals affect the top ranks, including generals, with colonels and lieutenant colonels making up the biggest share, Defense Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky said in an interview on Monday. It was ...

  Bloomberg Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic drew a parallel from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, causing an uproar across the Balkans. “Who annexed Kosovo? The international community, including us,” Milanovic said Monday in a speech in the Croatian town of Petrinja, where he spoke about the war in Ukraine. “Kosovo was taken from Serbia by force, ...

  Bloomberg Europe could boost bank lending by as much as €4.5 trillion ($4.9 trillion) by lightening the industry’s regulatory burden, according to a study commissioned by the region’s banking lobby. That increase of almost 30% would stem from bringing demands for European banks’ capital reserves and related costs more in line with those of US competitors, consultant Oliver Wyman ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG’s investment bank underperformed US peers in the fourth quarter, as equities revenue slumped and the Swiss firm failed to match gains in fixed-income trading. Revenue at the equities division — about twice the size of the debt and forex business — fell about 20% to $883 million, compared with declines of about half that on Wall ...

  Bloomberg Overseas funds piled into UK government bonds at an unprecedented pace in December 2022, one of the strongest signs yet that a market written off as broken just months ago is on the mend. Non-residents bought £38.3 billion ($47 billion) of gilts last month, figures published by the Bank of England (BOE) on Tuesday showed. A “portion of ...

  Bloomberg The Chinese central bank will extend the use of three monetary policy tools designed to encourage financial institutions to support green technologies and the logistics sector, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement. The bank will continue to offer cheap funding until the end of 2024 to banks which lend to firms that are helping ...