Bloomberg Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga’s chances of overturning the outcome of last week’s elections are fading, as he faces international pressure to take his allegations of vote rigging to court and the security forces crack down on his supporters. The US, European Union and African Union have all urged Odinga to seek legal recourse if he wants to challenge …

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has defiance in his blood. It’s said his grandfather once asked what would happen if America defeated North Korea in war, to which his father answered: “If we lose, I will be sure to destroy the Earth. What good is the Earth without North Korea?” President Trump has decided to confront what’s probably the …

Traveling through Macedonia this week led me to ponder the importance of a hegemon. More generally, many small, vulnerable countries—including Macedonia—will require an outside benefactor to secure their futures. A summary of Macedonian history doesn’t sound entirely promising. In the late 14th century, the region was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire. That boosted Macedonian development in some regards, but it …

The 10th anniversary of the financial crisis has prompted a lot of analysis about what we’ve learned and whether we’re ready for the next one. Pretty much everything you need to know, though, can be found in one chart: the capital ratios of the largest US banks. Capital, also known as equity, is the money that banks get from shareholders …

The Brexit deadline of March 2019 creeps ever closer, and exit talks are under way—but Britain’s government still doesn’t know what it wants. This failure to set a clear goal, much less devise a strategy for achieving it, isn’t all that surprising, given the political mess caused by Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to call an early election. It’s nonetheless …

In just a few years, Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have managed to ensure that they have practically no political rivals of consequence left. Four years ago, the map of India was a patchwork, with the BJP, its national rival the Congress, and multiple regional parties vying for supremacy at the state and federal level. Today, the BJP …

The firing of a Google employee for writing a memo that suggested women are biologically less equipped for engineering and management jobs has triggered a whole range of reactions, from those who strongly support the company’s action to those who see it as repression of free speech. Where you come out on this is partly a function of your assessment …

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the global financial crisis that set off the Great Recession. What the then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had characterized as a mere “$50 billion problem” morphed into a plunge in equity values with investors losing trillions of dollars, and a recession that caused unemployment to peak at 10 percent in …

Bloomberg The dollar rallied and U.S. stocks nudged lower amid a receding threat of war with North Korea. Treasuries extended losses and the dollar rallied after US retail sales exceeded forecasts last month, boosting speculation the Federal Reserve might lift interest rates again this year. S&P index futures also gained after the data, while traditional havens including gold and the …

DUBAI / Reuters Middle Eastern stock markets sagged again on Tuesday because of a mediocre economic outlook, with a shock loss at a real estate developer weighing on Dubai and Egypt dropping for a sixth straight day. Union Properties sank 4.3 percent to 0.82 dirham after it reported a 2.29 billion dirham ($624 million) net loss for the second quarter, …