December, 2018

• 25 December

  Suicide attack targets Libyan ministry

  

  Bloomberg Suicide bombers struck the Libyan Foreign Ministry’s headquarters in Tripoli, killing three people, officials said, in the latest blow to efforts to stabilise the war-ravaged North African nation. Gunmen opened fire on the ministry and one of them blew himself up, the Foreign Ministry said. At least 18 others were wounded, Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha said in a televised ...

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• 25 December

  43 killed, 10 injured in Kabul bomb attack

  

  Bloomberg At least 43 people were killed and 10 injured after militants detonated a car bomb before storming government offices in a building in Afghan capital Kabul, said Wahid Majrooh, a spokesman of the nation’s Ministry of Public Health. The gunmen also took hostages in the building of the National Authority for Disabled People and Martyrs’ Families, said Najib Danish, ...

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• 25 December

  Warmbier family wins $500 million in North Korea suit over son’s death

  

  Bloomberg A federal judge in Washington awarded $500 million in damages to the family of Otto Warmbier, an Ohio student who died after being detained in North Korea for 17 months. The wrongful death lawsuit was filed in April against the North Korean government by Warmbier’s parents, Fred and Cynthia Warmbier, accusing it of torturing their son. North Korea didn’t ...

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• 25 December

  Mongolia tax collectors are real winner in ‘lotto’

  

  Bloomberg Mongolia’s effort to get its citizens to pay taxes by enrolling them in a lottery is delivering a big payout — for the government. The north Asian country between Russia and China has expanded its tax base by almost half since 2016, according to government statistics, partly by printing a lottery ticket on every retail receipt when the 10 ...

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• 25 December

  US-Japan ‘80s trade war holds clues to China spat

  

  China may be suffering from President Donald Trump’s trade war. A substantial number of Chinese companies are laying off staff, cutting wages and reducing capital expenditures. Prices are being slashed on goods subject to tariffs. And China’s export growth has slowed. Of course, US consumers and manufacturers will also get hurt by the tariffs. And there’s a chance that China’s ...

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• 25 December

  Zuckerberg uses tech for his own ends

  

  The idea that a company as powerful and autocratic as Facebook Inc. would ever dive into crypto-currencies has always seemed a bit like the Death Star deciding to throw a staff Christmas party. Whether it’s the Bitcoin model itself or the more corporate-friendly efforts to exploit the blockchain approach (distributed databases across networks within a business or industry) it’s been ...

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• 25 December

  MYOB can do better than KKR’s bid. But it won’t

  

  KKR & Co. looks like it’s low-balling MYOB Group Ltd. Having initially offered A$3.70 per share for the Australian accounting-software maker, the private equity firm cut its bid to A$3.40. That’s still a premium to recent trading prices and the A$3.15 it paid to acquire a 17.6 percent stake. Yet it’s a discount to peers. KKR’s A$2 billion ($1.4 billion) ...

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• 25 December

  EU truce over budgets isn’t such a good idea

  The governments of France and Italy, under pressure from voters to change their policies, have put forward rule-breaking budgets for next year, and the European Union (EU) has decided to let things slide. Under the current testing circumstances, this flexibility on enforcing the rules is understandable — but it isn’t necessarily wise. To be sure, Italy’s populist administration has climbed down ...

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• 25 December

  Assault on India’s central bank autonomy is starting

  

  After sending two pesky central bank governors packing in a little over two years, Indian bureaucrats have turned their attention to unwinding the monetary authority’s autonomy. Their first move, unveiled last week, is an innocuous – even laudable – infusion of Rs 41,000 crore ($5.9 billion) into troubled state-run lenders, bumping up this fiscal year’s outlay for bank recapitalization by ...

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• 25 December

  Give everyone a reason to fight climate disaster

  

  Avoiding the devastating consequences of global warming means taking steps that will incur costs now. Those costs can be painful, as illustrated vividly by the social unrest in France, triggered in part by President Emmanuel Macron’s since-rescinded fuel tax. For some, such as the New York Times’s Bret Stephens, the lesson is clear: Forget reducing carbon dioxide emissions, because people ...

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