Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Theresa May is battling to put out multiple political fires at home as she prepa- res for a crucial meeting in Brussels that she hopes will end the deadlock in Brexit talks. Euro-skeptics including members of May’s own Conservative party set out new “red lines” for the negotiations ahead of a lunch meeting she’ll have on …

Bloomberg Ireland is well on its way to meeting its objectives in the Brexit negotiations, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, as the European Union and the UK approach a deadline for moving on to talks about their future trading relationship. A day after European Commission President Donald Tusk said the EU would consult with Ireland before deciding whether to allow …

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leader of the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz, agreed to keep talking as they stepped up joint efforts to break an impasse over forming Germany’s next government. Merkel told her Christian Democratic Union party’s board during a call that she and Schulz would continue to hold discussions on a way out of the political stalemate, …

Bloomberg House Republicans announced a plan to pass a two-week extension of federal government funding without Democratic votes and avoid a shutdown on December 8. The legislation would push the next deadline to the Friday before Christmas, giving House and Senate lawmakers time to knit together their respective tax-cutting bills into a single piece of legislation to present to President …

Bloomberg Barnaby Joyce will return to parliament as Australia’s deputy prime minister after winning a special election, five weeks after he was forced to step down for being a dual national in breach of the constitution. Joyce, 50, claimed victory in the rural seat of New England, winning 63 percent of the vote to 11 percent for his nearest rival …

The most commonly cited reasons for the surge of interest in passive investing products are fee savings and skepticism about the ability of active funds to outperform. Most likely, these two factors explain a dominant part of the record flow into an ever-widening range of these investments, including mutual funds and ETFs. But they may not be the only reasons. …

With all this love for bitcoin, spare a thought for the little guy. Despite a plethora of new coins coming online in the past year, and the emergence of ethereum as an alternative cryptocurrency, bitcoin is still sucking up most of the oxygen. Without a doubt, the new coins’ sponsors owe a debt of gratitude to bitcoin for blazing a …

Enshrined in the Constitution, the census is among the federal government’s most fundamental responsibilities. It is also one the government is perilously close to flunking, unless Congress and the administration act now. The decennial census is arguably the most important data set the government produces. It determines how many representatives each state sends to Washington, who sends them there, and …

An influential new recruit has joined the chorus of bitcoin skeptics. The chief investment officer of UBS, the world’s biggest wealth manager, says it’s too risky to be added to the firm’s portfolios — and his assessment is relatively mild. Others have called it “the very definition of a bubble” and even “a fraud.” Those stronger terms are justified, especially …

According to one of India’s most respected bankers, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—a mammoth sale of distressed assets, some $40 billion in the first round. Much could go wrong, of course, especially given that so many powerful interests have so much money at stake in the process. Fortunately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has stumbled in some of its biggest …