The first street protests against Emmanuel Macron’s proposed labor market reforms have been underwhelming. Several major unions stayed away. Estimates of the turn-out varied—from 223,000, according to fairly reliable police figures, to 500,000, according to the CGT, France’s biggest union, which called for the march. Whatever the real number, French unions are divided, and this helps Macron’s reform efforts. This ...

With China’s decision to phase out gas- and diesel-fuelled vehicles, the end is nearer for the internal combustion engine. For their nation to reap the full benefits of this revolution, Chinese leaders will need to continue to be bold. Nations that account for almost 80 percent of the world auto market are now planning or considering plans to end over ...

Catalonia’s separatist leaders say they will declare independence from Spain within 48 hours of victory in the independence referendum they’ve called for October 1. Spain’s highest court has ruled the referendum unconstitutional, and the government is determined to disrupt the ballot. A toxic combination of festering frustrations, nationalist myth, and mismanagement by Madrid has brought Spain to this point. Climbing ...

The competition to host HQ2, as Amazon’s planned second headquarters is called, has captivated the nation. The lucky city can expect an economic bonanza: 50,000 jobs, plus the tech ecosystem that the online retail giant’s presence will inevitably attract. But the winner doesn’t have to be a big metropolis. On the contrary, Amazon has the power to create an entirely ...

The yuan’s ascent this year has brought with it some of the usual handwringing about the impact on China’s exports. The anxiety kind of misses the point about modern China, as does much of the political conversation in America. A peek at the past week’s data from China is instructive. The really important numbers weren’t a decline in exports, but ...

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer’s decision to resign in October with nine months remaining on his term could mean the potential is high for central-bank policy to be reshaped much sooner than many investors expected. Fischer’s departure will leave four of the seven seats on the Fed Board of Governors vacant, and that doesn’t include the one held by ...

Bloomberg It’s been a busy week for Apple Inc. While Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook showed off the 10th anniversary iPhone in California, his lieutenants worked half a world away on what may become the company’s largest deal ever. Apple is in talks to invest about $3 billion in Toshiba Corp.’s memory chips business as part of a consortium led ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp., working with chipmaker Intel Corp., is offering a cloud-computing service with more powerful encryption to secure data from hackers—and protect it from secret government data-gathering. Called Azure confidential computing, the technology encrypts data while it is in use—which is when most security breaches occur, according to Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich. The new product works by ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. is upping its $8 billion bet on automotive technology, forming a separate business unit within Harman to house autonomous driving products and plowing $300 million into a new fund investing in startups in the space. The autonomous driving unit will compete on everything from driving algorithms to systems integration, Dinesh Paliwal, Harman’s chief executive officer, said ...

Bloomberg The small, popular drones flooding the commercial market are unlikely to cause severe head injuries if they fall out of the sky and strike people, a new study has concluded. The results are similar to findings earlier this year by researchers associated with the Federal Aviation Administration and offer more justification for opening the door to unmanned operations over ...