If Kenya goes ahead with its presidential vote this week, it will be making a historic mistake — one that threatens unrest and undermines a landmark court decision affirming the importance of transparent, free and fair elections. Thursday’s scheduled vote is a redo of one held on August 8, which Kenya’s Supreme Court annulled on September 1. In making its ...

From 2008 to 2014, according to the US Department of Justice, background checks prevented 556,496 gun purchases. In the last six months, about that many people have been removed from the national database and are newly eligible to buy a gun. The FBI’s national instant criminal background check system, which screens such transactions, is not quite perfect: It has an ...

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, has guided his country’s monetary policy for most of the 21st century. He was appointed in 2002, shortly after China joined the World Trade Organization, and helped steer its economy through the global financial crisis. In the process, he gained widespread respect at home and a reputation for prudent liberalism abroad. ...

The past decade has been a testing time for the Russian tycoon’s love affair with London. The worst relations with the West since the Cold War, economic sanctions on Russia’s biggest companies and an oil-price rout that sank the rouble to record depths forced Russian companies and investors to migrate elsewhere. An index of London-listed Russian stocks has fallen 42 ...

While consumers remember the iPhone for its cool design, closed-wall operating system and hefty price tag, industry insiders in Asia turn to the US giant as an example of incredible manufacturing discipline. First under Tim Cook, and now Jeff Williams, the current chief operating officer, Apple has shone as a beacon of how to discover and develop unique materials, coerce ...

Bloomberg Solid earnings reports from US blue-chip companies sparked optimism in the world’s largest economy, lifting equities, the dollar and Treasury yields. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high Tuesday after Caterpillar Inc. and 3M Co. delivered results that topped estimates, while General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler NV also rallied on earnings. Benchmark Treasury yields punched through ...

Reuters Saudi Arabia’s stock market ignored a huge investment conference in Riyadh and remained flat while Emaar Properties and contractor Drake & Scull helped Dubai to rebound on Tuesday. The market barely reacted to bullish news from a major investment conference in the kingdom, which attracted hundreds of bankers, businessmen and government officials from around the world. Crown Prince Mohammed ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc, which has the biggest investment bank in Saudi Arabia, says foreign investors are getting ready for their first significant stock purchases in the kingdom as an upgrade to emerging-market status looks likely. It’s ‘inevitable’ that MSCI Inc., whose classifications can influence billions of dollars of asset allocations, will add Saudi Arabia to its emerging-market benchmarks, Majed ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank, reported a six-fold jump in third-quarter profit, driven by the sale of its Pioneer Global Asset Management unit. Net income rose to 2.82 billion euros in the three months through September from 447 million euros a year earlier, the Milan-based bank said in statement on Tuesday. Revenue fell 3.9 percent to 4.65 billion euros ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is considering a small cut to its inflation projection for this year in a quarterly report to be released next week, according to people familiar with the central bank’s discussions. The BOJ may lower its forecast for core inflation from 1.1 percent for the fiscal year ending in March 2018, said the people, who ...