Secession, of all things, is back in the news. Residents of San Bernardino County, the largest in California, are debating whether to try to break off and form a state of their own. And there’s more: Last month, a New Hampshire electoral commission refused to bar from the ballot legislators who want their state to leave the US entirely. ...

The bonfire of the inanities. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng isn’t pulling any punches with his first moves in office. First, he unceremoniously fired the most senior civil servant in the Treasury. Now he is contemplating taking an axe to European Union regulations on financial services. But he is starting on the latter in a very odd way ...

  We’re living through arguably the most truly global attempt to tighten financial conditions in memory. This is shifting the tectonic plates beneath the world economy, and threatens dangerous developments in society and in politics as we all try to adapt. And yet what strikes the eye after a week of market landmarks and aggressive interventions by central banks is ...

  A proposal by the Group of Seven to impose a price cap on purchases of Russian oil is so neat that it’s been derided as an academic parlor game. Can the world’s wealthiest countries really reduce Moscow’s revenue while keeping crude flowing into global markets? As it happens, the answer is probably yes. The plan has plenty of flaws, ...

Bloomberg Nasa is standing down from its Artemis I mission to the moon next week, as a tropical storm off the coast of South America creeps towards Florida and the agency’s launch site for the Space Launch System rocket. The US space agency said it will decide whether to roll the rocket and spacecraft back from the launch pad to ...

  Bloomberg JetBlue Airways Corp baggage handlers and other airport ground workers are looking to gain union representation, potentially following pilots and flight attendants in joining an organised labor group at the carrier. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) said it will file an application with the National Mediation Board after a sufficient number of the 3,000 ...

  Bloomberg All Nippon Airways will increase international flights and cabin staff numbers to meet an anticipated jump in demand when Japan abolishes Covid-19 border controls next month. “We’ve long been waiting for the easing of restrictions,” Chief Executive Officer Shinichi Inoue told reporters at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Friday. “We want to welcome visitors from overseas with increased ...

  Bloomberg Canadian retail sales rise slightly in August, a welcome rebound from the largest decline in more than a year in July. Receipts for retailers increased 0.4% in August, Statistics Canada reported Friday in Ottawa, according to an advance estimate. That follows a 2.5% sales drop in July, which was the first decline in seven months and the largest ...

Bloomberg Grilled by reporters at the United Nations General Assembly about what comes next in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had simple advice. “You should read Putin more often and carefully,” he told a journalist who asked about Moscow’s endgame for the seven-month-old conflict, directing the questioner to Putin’s speeches for guidance. The Russian president’s public comments ...

Bloomberg North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile, marking a return to provocations with US Vice President Kamala Harris due to arrive in the region and as an American aircraft carrier group prepares for naval exercises with South Korea. The launch on Sunday was its first since shooting off its single-day record of eight at the start of June. At ...