AFP Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno pinned his colours to the mast, donning a green and red scarf as his countrymen lifted the European Championship trophy. EU colleagues in Brussels congratulated him as he lauded the Seleccao’s final win over tournament hosts France in Paris. But the Lisbon government had two reasons to celebrate — not just a maiden ...

  France is in the line of fire. Of the 16 terrorist incidents that took place in Western nations this year, five were in France, including the deadliest one — Thursday’s apparent lone wolf attack in Nice, which killed at least 84 people. A little more than a week before the attack, a commission set up by the French parliament ...

Russia’s lease of the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, at $115 million per year, extends until 2050. Although Russia’s new spaceport, the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East, saw its first successful launch in April, the facility is a long way from completion and already behind schedule. Periodic reports that Russia intends to leave Baikonur before 2050–such as news last summer ...

  Noah Smith After a landslide victory in Japan’s election on July 10th, the Liberal Democratic Party now has a supermajority in both the upper and lower houses of the Diet. Essentially, there is no longer any effective political opposition in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has more power than any leader in decades — even more than his famous ...

  AFP The European Central Bank, widely expected to hold fire on monetary policy next week, will likely prepare the ground for more stimulus measures in September as the economic fallout for the eurozone from Brexit becomes clearer, analysts predicted. The ECB’s decision-making governing council is scheduled to hold its regular policy meeting on Thursday, a month after Britain voted ...

  Bloomberg Turkey’s central bank is holding an extraordinary meeting with bank executives to discuss ways to minimize the market impact of the coup attempt, the Haberturk newspaper reported. The bank convened members of the Banks Association of Turkey, the Istanbul-based newspaper said, without saying where it got its information about the meeting. Turkey’s lira plunged the most against the ...

  Bloomberg Negative yields are spreading to more areas of the fixed-income market by the day. Data from Barclays Plc highlight the staggering pace of change as this week Deutsche Bahn AG became the first non-financial company to sell negative-yielding bonds, and the German government auctioned 10-year debt with a sub-zero yield for the first time. To get a sense ...

  BLOOMBERG Efforts by regulators to level the playing field among European banks is putting Swedish lenders at a disadvantage, according to the chief executive officer of SEB AB, one of the Nordic country’s four big banks. Regulators from Stockholm to Basel are pushing to shrink differences in how banks estimate potential losses, an undertaking designed to ensure that lenders ...

  Bloomberg Forgot your bank card at home? No worries. Many ATMs will soon dispense cash with help from a smartphone and banking app. A growing number of banks are letting consumers arrange withdrawals via their mobile app and pick up the cash at a nearby automated teller machine. Customers authenticate the transaction by scanning a QR code with their ...

  Washington / AFP It may be inside a protest rally, or in front of a deadly shooting. Smartphones, video and social media are empowering citizens to tell their stories like never before. This became clear with the live video earlier this month from Diamond Reynolds when she captured the aftermath of the shooting by a police officer of her ...