With Donald Trump’s approval ratings in the dumps, it’s no surprise that early maneuvering for the 2020 Democratic nomination is already fairly visible. Ed Kilgore assesses the field as some of the longer of the long shots get ready for visits to Iowa, and he raises the question of whether a very large field will be vulnerable to the kind ...

President Jacob Zuma has survived yet another attempt to oust him, beating back a no-confidence vote in South Africa’s parliament. A Pyrrhic victory for Zuma’s supporters in the ruling African National Congress, the outcome is a clear loss for the rest of the country. Tuesday’s vote was instigated by the opposition last spring, after Zuma fired his respected finance minister, ...

The diligence of congressional Republicans in holding Donald Trump’s presidency in check has so far inspired little confidence. Even some Republicans have been disappointed. “To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties,” Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona wrote. “And tremendous powers of denial.” ...

Andrea Jones-Rooy recently made a very interesting economic argument in the pages of FiveThirtyEight. She claimed that President Donald Trump’s proposal to reinstate a ban on Americans travelling to Cuba might actually help that island nation’s economy: Cuba is showing few signs of economic diversification: It is already suffering a domestic brain drain. … The government also still manages most ...

Hey all, it’s Sarah. Snap’s earnings are this week, and investors are already anticipating bad news, thanks to a “never-ending doomsday narrative around Facebook’s perceived impact on Snapchat,” according to analyst Brian White of Drexel Hamilton. And it’s not just a narrative —it’s a fact that Facebook has been expertly copying Snapchat’s most popular features, just when the newly public ...

White House policy adviser Stephen Miller’s prickly performance at a news conference last week to discuss new immigration legislation didn’t get the greatest reviews. But I actually kind of enjoyed his response to CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s charge (the quotes that follow are from CNN’s transcript of the briefing) that “what you’re proposing here, what the president’s proposing here does ...

Bloomberg A risk-off tone gripped markets on Wednesday, with gold, the Japanese yen and bonds rising as ten- sion grew between the US and North Korea. European stocks slumped following declines across most of Asia. The yellow metal headed for its largest increase in two months while the yen and Swiss franc posted the biggest gains among G-10 currencies after ...

DUBAI / Reuters Middle Eastern stock markets generally moved sideways in quiet trade on Wednesday, outperforming other emer- ging markets, though Dubai theme park operator DXB Entertainments sank because of poor first-half earnings. The Gulf has underperformed global emerging markets this year, hit by low oil prices and government austerity policies. But this may have left the Gulf less vulnerable ...

Dubai / WAM Dubai Land Department (DLD) announced that the total value of real estate transactions excee- ded AED390 billion across 95,000 transactions in the 18 months from January 1, 2016 to July 31, 2017. Commenting on the results, Sultan Butti bin Mejren, Director General of DLD, said, “These figures demonstrate an atmosphere of optimism across the real estate market. ...

DUBAI / WAM Major General Obaid Rashid Al Hossan Al Shamsi, Head of the Executive Directorate of Strategic Analysis at the Ministry of Defence, has met with Samuel Tan Chi Tse, Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to the UAE, where the two sides discussed bilateral relations and ways to strengthen them. The meeting, which was held at the ministry’s ...