May, 2018

• 30 May

  Anti-Kremlin journo shot dead in Kiev

  Bloomberg A Russian journalist critical of President Vladimir Putin was shot dead at his home in Kiev, the third assassination in two years of a Kremlin foe in Ukraine’s capital. Arkady Babchenko, who moved to the city last year following threats in his homeland, was fired on after returning from buying bread and died of his injuries in an ambulance, ...

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• 30 May

  Spanish opposition may secure votes to topple Rajoy

  

  Bloomberg The Socialists, Spain’s biggest opposition party, are negotiating on two fronts for the support they need to oust PM Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote on Friday, according to people briefed on the talks. The party has made inroads in the past 24 hours but the result is likely to remain in the balance until the last moment as ...

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• 30 May

  Infighting dogs S African opposition as poll nears

  

  Bloomberg South Africa’s main opposition party has been its own worst enemy as it attempts to unseat the African National Congress. The Democratic Alliance has botched attempts to fire Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille, igniting infighting and irking supporters ahead of next year’s elections, while an agreement that sees it run other major cities risks unraveling. With the ANC ...

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• 30 May

  Behind Trump’s zig-zag course to Singapore

  

  “Are you on the road or in the ditch?” That’s the question labor reporters used to ask about big contract negotiations back when I covered the United Steelworkers union 40 years ago in Pittsburgh — and it’s the right one to pose now as President Trump zigs and zags toward a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un. Trump and Kim ...

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• 30 May

  Investors take fright at UK retail’s warnings

  

  With Brexit looming, profit warnings have become the new black for the British High Street. In the first quarter, a fifth of the country’s biggest publicly traded retailers warned earnings would fall, according to accounting firm EY. Worries about the economy are present, obviously, but heavy selling from investors — Dixons Carphone Plc’s stock fell 20 percent on Tuesday after ...

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• 30 May

  When too much success risks the ire of regulators

  Hargreaves Lansdown Plc is on a roll. The UK’s biggest direct-to-consumer fund platform saw the assets it manages grow by 3 percent to $120 billion in the four months through April as it added 60,000 new clients. The firm’s market value is near a record 9 billion pounds. That picture of health, though, may prove a red rag to the ...

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• 30 May

  What Europe should do about crisis in Italy

  The crisis in Italy is also a crisis for the European Union. The populist parties that won the last Italian election, and that hope to do even better next time, are united in little except blaming the EU for Italy’s setbacks. They’re wrong about this, and now Europe must be careful not to play into their hands. The immediate political ...

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• 30 May

  Europe has tamed Russia’s Gazprom, not let it off easy

  

  The European Commission has settled a seven-year antitrust dispute with Gazprom, which was required to make concessions but avoided a fine. Although the Russian natural gas monopoly’s detractors in Eastern Europe are likely to say Europe caved, the settlement shows that the company has been defanged and is no longer a threat to Europe’s energy security. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s ...

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• 30 May

  The race to autonomy may be won in China

  

  Everybody wants autonomous vehicles now: It’s the auto industry’s way forward and Silicon Valley’s latest preoccupation. China is no different. Alibaba Group Holding is testing self-driving cars in China, and Baidu Inc. started trials of autonomous technology last year. BMW earlier this month was the first foreign carmaker to get a license to test its offering in China. In mid-May, ...

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• 30 May

  Tesla’s well-paid board directors sound the retweet

  

  Elon Musk’s recent Twitter-lashing of the media has prompted comparisons to President Donald Trump’s “fake news” obsession. For me, though, its sheer variety — encompassing Soviet propaganda, a new Model Y launch date, the Theranos scandal, the lameness of car emoji, and much more — instead brought Steve Bannon to mind, particularly his media strategy: “flood the zone with shit.” ...

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