Bloomberg Centuries-old communal tensions across West Africa are taking an increasingly bloody turn, fuelled by competition for land and water and an influx of weapons and fighters from Libya. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed that cocktail of guns and gunmen for the intensifying clashes between crop farmers and herders as well as robberies and kidnapping by bandit gangs. The ...

Bloomberg A leading Brexit minister in Theresa May’s government was forced into a painful political admission — the UK is legally bound to settle its divorce bill even if it doesn’t get a future trade deal with the EU. To make the bitter pill of 39 billion pounds ($52 billion) easier to swallow for the public and Brexit cheerleaders, May ...

China, not the US, is the world’s largest economy. Though the US still tops when measured at market-exchange rates, China is about 20 percent larger after adjusting for the lower cost of goods and services there. The latter metric is what really counts, both in terms of standards of living and, probably, in terms of military purchasing power. With four ...

“Whatever it takes.” Those three symbolic words were uttered by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in July 2012, and European bonds have benefited hugely from the “Draghi put” ever since. Italy has revived existential questions about the bloc. The latest twist in this drama looks to be the agreement between Five Star and the League on a prime minister, ...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had two priorities heading into a hearing at the European Parliament on Tuesday. First, he had to avoid a serious gaffe that could be replayed again and again as a soundbite on the evening news. Second, he had to convince lawmakers that Facebook Inc. is doing enough to counter fake news, foreign interventions into elections and ...

The grid operator that delivers power to most of Texas set an all-time peak electricity demand record this week for the month of May. Hot weather, a healthy economy and a growing population have all given Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. reason to expect record-breaking summer usage. The main driver of warm-weather peaks is air conditioning. Joshua Rhodes of ...

Nord Stream 2, the planned Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany across the floor of the Baltic Sea, is the latest front in the growing conflict between Europe and the US. The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump is demanding that Germany drop Nord Stream 2 as one of the conditions of a trade deal with Europe that ...

Marks & Spencer Group Plc rebranded itself as Markle & Sparkle over the weekend, in honor of the royal wedding. But with so much work in progress, for investors, any celebrations are likely to fall flat. The company will step up the pace of store closures when it announces its annual earnings, Bloomberg News reported. Although the amount of capacity ...

US financial markets seem unfazed by a sequence of negative developments on the trade front. The May 17 date set by Paul Ryan, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, for Congress to approve a revised North American Free Trade Agreement has passed with no resolution. The European Union, a major US ally, resents the June 1 deadline President Donald ...

Bloomberg Stocks fell from Tokyo to New York as data cast doubts on growth prospects for the euro area while political tensions increased in North Korea, Turkey and the US Ten-year Treasury yields briefly dipped below 3 percent, while the dollar climbed. The S&P 500 Index dropped for a second day at the highest since March, while the Stoxx Europe ...