Bloomberg ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ The United Nations Security Council approved new sanctions aimed at punishing North Korea for its latest missile and nuclear tests after the US dropped demands such as an oil embargo to win support from Russia and China. The 15-member council passed the resolution unanimously following a week of talks that began when Kim Jong Un’s regime tested its …

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s renewed push to resolve a three-month showdown between Qatar and a Saudi-led coalition was spurred by a conviction that the impasse has distracted US Gulf allies from his attempt to challenge Iran. Trump told Kuwaiti officials visiting the White House last week that Gulf Arab nations can’t effectively counter growing Iranian regional influence if they’re busy …

Bloomberg Prime Minister Erna Solberg became Norway’s first Conservative Party leader in over three decades to be re-elected as a movement to stop further oil exploration in western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer fizzled. “We won support for four more years because we have delivered on what we have promised and also because we have met tough challenges,” Solberg said at …

Bloomberg Kenya is running out of time to ensure a credible rerun of presidential elections that were annulled by the nation’s top court after the main opposition party alleged that they were rigged. With the next vote due in just five weeks, the electoral commission is mired in infighting over who should take the fall for last month’s botched contest. …

WASHINGTON / Reuters US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy provided a temporary reprieve for President Trump’s order blocking most refugees from entering the United States, putting on hold a lower court’s ruling loosening the prohibition. Kennedy’s action gave the nine justices more time to consider the Justice Department’s challenge filed to the lower court’s decision allowing entry to refugees from …

“Congress has been dropping in relative power along a descending curve of 60 years’ duration, with the rate of fall markedly increased since 1933. … The fall of the American Congress seems to be correlated with a more general historical transformation toward political and social forms within which the representative assembly — the major political organism of post-Renaissance Western civilization …

The Trump administration is looking to ease financial-strength requirements for big banks, on the grounds that they’ve already done enough to avert another crisis. But how much safer have they really become? In recent posts, I’ve offered some less-than-encouraging evidence. Levels of loss-absorbing equity, although higher than before the crisis, still fall far short of what’s needed. And despite the …

In a sharp and welcome rebuke to President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy, a Senate committee voted last week in favor of more diplomacy. Support was unanimous. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved $51.2 billion for the State Department, the US Agency for International Development and other overseas assistance — more than a third greater than the $37.6 billion the …

Almost a year on, India’s ban on large-denomination bills has been deemed a “total failure.” That’s not quite fair. True, the primary goal of flushing out tax cheats has been a flop. But a secondary goal — “to move toward the cashless society,” as India’s finance minister put it — still has real promise. The rest of the world, in …

If you’ve ever been to India, it’s likely that you’ve been startled by how young the country looks; the streets of any Indian town, even of its villages, are full of 20-somethings. This isn’t a surprise: India is a very young country. Half of its population is under the age of 25. Two-thirds are less than 35. As a recent …