Bloomberg Switzerland’s property-market watchdogs aren’t likely to catch a break. With European interest rates set to remain low for even longer, that’s going to further fuel the ongoing exuberance in Swiss real estate that’s seen multiple warnings this month alone. The issue is particularly acute in buy-to-let properties, as insurers and pension funds look to compensate for otherwise meager returns. ...

Bloomberg If Donald Trump’s administration was looking for signs of easing tensions between two of his vaunted constituencies — blue-collar oil and rural farmers — a hearing in Michigan proves otherwise. The two sides exchanged heated comments at a public hearing over proposed changes by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on ethanol policy. Oil refiners and agricultural proponents, including Iowa ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump gave North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a list of demands that included a call for handing over nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the US in their talks in Hanoi last month, Reuters reported, citing the document. Trump handed Kim the piece of paper stating the US position at their meeting in Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said he’ll close the southern border next week unless Mexico “immediately” stops illegal migration into the US, which his Homeland Security secretary said threatens a “system-wide meltdown” at her agency. “Closing the border will be a profit-making operation,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “There’s a very good likelihood that I’ll ...

Bloomberg Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers clashed at the Gaza border on Saturday, the one-year anniversary of Hamas-led protests to draw attention to the territory’s plight. About 50,000 protesters had joined the rally, with one Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces and a few dozen needing treatment for tear-gas exposure, according to Palestinian reports. The army said it was using ...

Bloomberg Britain is edging closer to a general election after parliament rejected Theresa May’s Brexit deal for a third time, deepening the political crisis that has overtaken the country’s bitter divorce from the European Union. Speaking after the result of the vote was announced, the prime minister gave a veiled warning that an election could be necessary to end the ...

Bloomberg Slovaks are voting in a presidential runoff that will probably lift a liberal pro-European Union lawyer to the nation’s highest office in a rebuke of the populism that’s sweeping parts of the bloc’s ex-communist wing. Zuzana Caputova, a 45-year-old, captured a strong lead in support before the ballot. Poised to become Slovakia’s first woman president, she swept up more ...

Russian claims this week that they’ve been exonerated by Robert Mueller’s final report make my skin crawl. But they highlight the critical question of how the US and Russia can begin to move back towards a saner relationship. Frankly speaking (as Russians like to say), the first step is for Russia to stop pretending that it didn’t meddle in the ...

Emmanuel Macron is basking in the spotlight of Brexit. His performance at the summit of European leaders, in which he took a tough line publicly against the UK’s desperate request for a delay to the March 29th deadline, has been compared to Charles de Gaulle’s repeated refusal to let Britain join the European Community in the 1960s. An unconditional delay? ...

Budget aviation ain’t what it used to be. Passengers on Easyjet Plc aircraft can book fares that let them change flight times at no extra cost. Those on Singapore Airlines Ltd.’s Scoot and JetBlue Airways Corp. can pay for business-class seats, and people flying Juneyao Airlines Co. can collect frequent flier points and spend them on flights with Star Alliance ...