Bloomberg The US walked out of military cost-sharing talks with South Korea, after the key American ally balked at President Donald Trump’s demands for a five-fold funding increase. The chief US negotiator, James DeHart, said that the American side cut short talks in Seoul because the South Koreans “were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden-sharing.” The ...

Bloomberg Poland’s populist government suffered another blow to its sweeping judicial reforms after the European Union’s highest court raised fresh concerns about the independence of judges. The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg said it was up to Poland’s Supreme Court to decide if a new disciplinary body for judges was autonomous from political influence, leaving the fate of the ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong hospitals were overwhelmed with injured protesters who evacuated from a university campus after a standoff with police that’s transfixed the city, as schools were due to reopen following days of chaos in the financial hub. Leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday that she wanted a peaceful end to the showdown between protesters and police at the Hong ...

As the House opens public impeachment hearings into the Ukraine scandal, the bottom-line question is dead simple: Did President Trump, for political reasons, manipulate military aid to an ally in a war that has cost 13,000 lives? When you think about the Ukrainian soldiers in the front lines of this nasty proxy battle against Russia, the debate becomes more visceral ...

Now that Germany has avoided a technical recession, posting an economic output growth of 0.1% in the third quarter of 2019, it’s highly unlikely that the German government will deviate from its zero-deficit policy and offer any substantial fiscal stimulus. For now, the country’s domestic market has shown an uncanny ability to compensate for external turbulence. But faster growth is ...

China loves the blockchain, and the blockchain loves it back. Despite the People’s Republic having the least free internet in the world, and a ban on cryptocurrency trading, the Communist Party’s endorsement of the technology last month sent Bitcoin prices soaring almost 30% in a few days. The irony is striking, considering Bitcoin’s anarchic origins. But there’s something broader going ...

The Indian economy continues to slow. The monthly Index of Industrial Production fell to an eight-year low in the month of September, contracting by over 4%. According to India’s central bank, growth in bank credit to industries in the same month fell to 2.7%, the lowest in a year. While the numbers for services are a little better, even they ...

British Conservatives can claim to be the world’s oldest and most successful political party. They’ve been written off more than a few times in the 200-plus years they’ve been around. But they’ve always bounced back. Their secret? The ability and willingness to reinvent themselves – even when that means giving up what supposedly defines them and the values they hold ...

Hong Kong is doing everything it can to ensure Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s listing is a roaring success. That’s turning the $12 billion mega-sale into a hot item — if you can get your hands on the shares. Alibaba will initially offer only 2.5% of the offering to individual investors, a quarter of the allocation specified in Hong Kong’s listing ...

Startups and tech companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Gojek, Bird and Compass operate in many cities and often multiple countries, and they typically have a repeatable playbook for each time they arrive in a new place. What Gojek, the food delivery and rides startup in Southeast Asia, learns about optimal pay for couriers in Jakarta can translate, at least in ...