Bloomberg The year was 1989 and Mark Read, armed with degrees from top-tier academic institutions and an appetite for business, wrote an application to Martin Sorrell, the founder of a little-known advertising outfit snapping at the heels of the titans on Madison Avenue. The letter landed Read his first job at WPP Plc and in the next years, the soft-spoken ...

Bloomberg Sudan’s transitional military council announced an end to a curfew and a commitment to hand power to a civilian government within two years, signalling that pro-democracy protests are weakening the army’s grip in the oil-producing African nation. The moves followed the decision of Defense Minister Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf to stand down as the head of the council less ...

Bloomberg North Korean leader Kim Jong-un elevated the ranks of dozens of military officers in the latest display of his grip on power amid a stalemate in nuclear talks with the US. Kim ordered three people to be promoted to full general and 33 others to major general on Sunday to mark the upcoming birthday of his grandfather and North ...

Bloomberg Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari told an election tribunal the candidate he beat in a February vote was not a citizen of Nigeria by birth and ought not to have even been allowed to run for the office, deepening the rift between the political leaders in the oil-rich west African nation. The allegation against Atiku Abubakar, the opposition candidate of ...

Bloomberg Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new government that excludes his rival Hamas and puts his long-time ally Mohammad Shtayyeh in the role of prime minister at a moment of intensifying pressure on the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu now looks likely to serve a fifth term as Israeli prime minister. Just before Israelis went to the polls, Netanyahu ...

Bloomberg France’s Yellow Vest protesters took to the streets for a 22nd weekend, leading to clashes with police in the southwestern city of Toulouse, while the capital remained calm. Police used tear gas and water cannon in Toulouse to keep demonstrators out of the centre of the city, France.tv showed. Parts of Paris and some regional cities were declared off limits ...

Bloomberg Roger Stone, a sometime adviser and confidant of President Donald Trump, launched a blunderbuss attack on his indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, filing a flurry of papers claiming he was singled out for prosecution and demanding that his lawyers be allowed to see the special counsel’s final report. A longtime Republican political operative and dirty trickster, Stone was ...

The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran assumes that economic sanctions are weakening the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — and that more sanctions will make the IRGC weaker still. The problem is that US and European intelligence analysts don’t think this forecast is accurate. “Re-imposition of sanctions in 2018 has played into the hands of the IRGC,” warns ...

The health of the US economy largely comes down to consumers’ attitude and spending. That’s why some investors were anxious about the contentious government shutdown that lasted into early 2019; any lingering concerns could dampen the outlook for future growth. Judging by JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s first-quarter earnings, that saga has barely been a blip. And that might just mean ...

China’s economy has come up for air, just a little. A bit of pep in recent Chinese numbers is encouraging. At least as important as the short-term bounce, though, is the long-term trajectory. The Middle Kingdom may lose its exceptionalism and start looking more like the US and Europe in ways that seemed barely conceivable during the 1990s and the ...