Bloomberg Granola and oatmeal lovers in the US may need to prepare for some sticker shock. Oat production in Canada, the world’s biggest exporter, is set to plunge after rain and snow delayed harvests across the Prairie Provinces. Because the crop spent too much time in wet fields, grain quality declined, which means more will end up as livestock ...

  Geneva / AP Like other countries after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Switzerland pledged to abandon nuclear power in coming years. But anti-nuclear advocacy groups say the Swiss government’s timetable isn’t fast enough, and have pushed for a referendum this weekend that would hasten the planned exit. Swiss voters cast ballots on an initiative championed by environmentalists and nuclear foes ...

  LONDON / AP Since Britain voted to leave the European Union, UK officials have had one message: Brexit means Brexit. Now they have EU leaders’ reply: And it’s going to hurt. The prime minister of Malta, whose country is about to assume the EU presidency, is the latest leader to dash Britain’s hopes of an easy divorce, signaling that ...

  Bloomberg Actelion Ltd. said that Johnson & Johnson has approached it about a potential takeover of the $17 billion Swiss drugmaker, as the US health-care giant works to expand its pharmaceutical lineup. Actelion confirmed the approach in a statement and said it’s not certain that a deal will happen. Actelion is working with an adviser to explore options, and ...

  Lowering the corporate tax rate appears to be all the rage. Donald Trump has promised a cut to 15 percent from 35 percent in the U.S., and British Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to make the U.K.’s corporate tax the lowest in the G-20, which would mean taking it lower than Trump intends to. On the surface, it ...

  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is willing to try just about anything to get his company back into China. Publicly, he launched a charm offensive that included learning Mandarin and offering Chinese President Xi Jinping the chance to name his first child (he declined). Less publicly, but no less important, the New York Times reports that his company has developed tools ...

  On Sunday, France’s Republican Party will choose its candidate for the presidential election next spring. Opinion polls say that the Republicans are so far ahead that the party, in effect, is about to name the next president — either Alain Juppe or Francois Fillon, former prime ministers offering not-too-dissimilar conservative programs. The polls, for once, had better be right. ...

  Environmentalists are stepping up their campaign to ban plastic microbeads, which are polluting our seas and killing marine life. These are also entering our food chain. What are plastic microbeads? They are tiny plastic particles which are found in cosmetics — including facial scrubs, exfoliators, shower gels and toothpastes — and household products as well as industrial processes. A ...

  The Chancellor is right to keep his powder dry” was George Osborne’s comment on the mini-budget presented this week by Philip Hammond, his successor at the head of the U.K. Treasury. That’s probably correct given the cloud of uncertainty the Brexit vote is casting over the economy. If he waits too long, however, Hammond risks missing an opportunity to ...

  Why has so much of the world succumbed to populist demagoguery and xenophobic nationalism? To a non-trivial extent, economists may be responsible. This idea finds some support in a new book, The Econocracy, written by three U.K. economics students — Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins. They argue that popular dissatisfaction with government has a lot to do ...