Bloomberg Rudolph Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer and a former federal prosecutor, said there’s nothing wrong with a US presidential candidate taking information from Russian sources. “It depends on where it came from,” Giuliani told moderator Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.” While in hindsight he’d advise against accepting Russia’s aid “out of an excess of caution,” Giuliani ...

Bloomberg Tripoli’s Mitiga International Airport has reopened to flights after being shut down for several hours. Flights were suspended because of airstrikes aimed at forces loyal to the internationally recognised government, which is based in Tripoli in northwest Libya. The airport closed earlier this month following an air strike, the first in an offensive by warlord Khalifa Haftar to take ...

Bloomberg Spanish newspaper opinion polls signalled a potential deadlock from elections to be held on April 28, with neither alliances from the left nor right wings of the political scene certain to be able to build a parliamentary majority. A survey published by El Pais newspaper showed the Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on course to win 129 seats ...

Bloomberg For a country that set a record in holding the world’s largest single-day election, the verdict on who emerged victorious from Indonesia’s mammoth exercise isn’t breaking any. A delay in official results of the presidential election has led its two contenders to claim victory, deepening a divide among the electorate after a seven-month long polarising campaign that centred on ...

Bloomberg Ukrainians are poised to elect the country’s most-watched comedian as president in a backlash at the ex-Soviet republic’s lack of progress since a revolution five years ago. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a 41-year-old TV comic who’s tapped into fury at the political class, was expected to comfortably defeat incumbent Petro Poroshenko at a runoff on Sunday, according to opinion polls. Despite ...

Some government foolishness has an educational value that compensates for its considerable cost. Consider the multibillion-dollar federal electric-vehicle tax credit, which efficiently illustrates how government can, with one act, diminish its already-negligible prestige while subtracting from America’s fairness. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., hope to repeal the tax credit, which probably will survive because it does ...

As China posts yet another quarter of six percent-plus growth, analysts have been quick to brand the latest upswing as a rebound. Buoyed by this year’s double-digit stock-market gains, large flows of credit and tax cuts for consumers, Beijing is trying to sell the narrative that growth remains stable. Some official statistics seem to support that theory: Gross domestic product ...

Two consumer goods giants, two first-quarter reports that exceeded analysts’ expectations. Which is better? Nestle SA and Unilever both have the same problem. They have to show they can grow, but at the same time improve profitability. To this end, both are reshaping their core portfolios. Nestle has an activist investor lurking in the background, while Unilever is at risk ...

Anti-establishment parties have made real inroads in southern Europe in recent years, taking power in Italy and Greece after vowing to jettison mainstream political thinking and challenge the economic consensus in Brussels. As Spain goes to the polls this month, many are worried about the rise of Vox, an anti-immigrant, anti-feminist movement that has emerged as a genuine electoral force. ...

Here’s some good news for America’s flood-hit farmers: China is looking at shifting agricultural tariffs, imposed as part of its tit-for-tat trade war with President Donald Trump, to other products instead. Levies of some sort would still remain in place, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg News, but move to non-agricultural items. That would allow Beijing to match Washington’s ...