Bloomberg Afghan President Ashraf Ghani presented his most comprehensive peace plan to the Taliban in a bid to bring them to the negotiating table and end the nation’s near 17-year war. Ghani said he would recognize the Taliban as a political group and would initiate talks if they agreed to a cease-fire, he told delegates at a peace conference in ...

Bloomberg The Democratic Republic of Congo reacted angrily to Botswana’s claim that President Joseph Kabila’s decision to remain in power is stoking instability in the vast central African nation. Congo’s communications minister dismissed as “nonsense” the comments from Botswana, which represented the most strident criticism yet of Kabila by an African government. It comes as militia violence flares in Congo’s ...

The question of whether to prioritize jobs or economic efficiency is always difficult. Nowhere is this more of a dilemma than in the construction industry. In a world of rapid technological disruption, construction is a rock of solidity to which many blue-collar workers can cling. The industry still employs about 7 million workers in the US. The job doesn’t change ...

Riots, drought, social instability: Emerging markets are never easy. Now investors face a potentially bigger test—they must decide whether President Xi Jinping’s determination to remain in power in China is a risk-on or risk-off moment for the whole asset class. The Communist Party is set to repeal presidential term limits this month in a step that would allow the 64-year-old ...

Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s choice of a new central bank governor is a clear signal that the campaign for next year’s election has begun in earnest. It’s hard to find another way to explain the promotion of Bank Indonesia Deputy Governor Perry Warjiyo to the top job. With campaigning for municipal elections in June under way and a tough presidential ...

Something was missing on a trip to East Asia a few weeks ago. And on separate visits to Mideast and India toward the end of last year. Took me a while to figure what it was. You know that feeling where you get that you left something behind, but you just can’t quite remember what? Ah, yes! Brexit! Britain’s decision ...

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” So wrote Milton Friedman, the great economist and Nobel laureate. Someone should tell today’s corporate leaders, who are responding to the age of Trump in part by spending energy on activities other than directly increasing profits. ...

For most of the past half century, the yen has either been severely undervalued or severely overvalued against the dollar, resulting in a highly destructive boom-bust supercycle in Japan’s economy. But now, the currency is finally showing signs of stabilizing at somewhere close to fair value as defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measure of purchasing power ...

Detroit’s auto giants are on the cusp of what looks like a major victory. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering making drastic cuts to fuel-efficiency targets for future vehicles that were set under President Barack Obama in 2012. US automakers would like easier mileage standards because improvements from here will raise the cost of vehicles and require selling ...

Bloomberg If Mario Draghi had to design the way his colleagues get picked, it would probably be a bit different from how it is now. The European Central Bank president twice stopped short of praising the process for board appo- intments — aside from a mention of safeguards to independence — when asked this week about how his future vice ...