December, 2017

• 12 December

  NYC bombing shows need for tougher laws, says Trump

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump said that Monday’s New York City bombing shows the urgency of tightening immigration laws as his spokeswoman argued the administration’s policies would have kept the suspect out of the country. “America must fix its lax immigration system, which allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people to access our country,” Trump said in a written statement. ...

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• 12 December

  Merkel gives strongest support yet for Macron’s EU reform drive

  

  Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the European Union must push ahead with deepening integration next year if the bloc is to have meaningful influence on the global stage, her clearest backing yet for a reform drive championed by French President Emmanuel Macron. Merkel said she wanted talks to form another coalition government with the Social Democrats to be concluded ...

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• 12 December

  ‘Erdogan was target in bribery inquiry’

  

  Bloomberg Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was among the targets of a bribery and money laundering probe in that country related to illicit flows of Iranian oil proceeds, a former Istanbul police officer testified in New York. The officer, Huseyin Korkmaz, said the investigation initially focused on the organization run by gold trader Reza Zarrab, but later grew to include ...

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• 12 December

  US is wrong to fear him: Honduran opposition leader

  

  Bloomberg Honduran opposition leader Salvador Nasralla says he’s a moderate, pro-US candidate who Washington is wrong to fear, as he demands a full recount of ballots in a disputed election that has plunged the central American nation into its worst crisis in nearly a decade. Nasralla says he is a moderate who the US government has mistakenly branded a radical. ...

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• 12 December

  Bitcoin futures market is no bubble bellwether

  

  Bitcoin just passed its first major Wall Street test, but cryptocurrency bulls shouldn’t read too much into it. Bitcoin futures began trading on the evening of December 10, Sunday on the CBOE—the first ‘Wall Street’ exchange to list the digital currency — and the direction was straight up. By 11:30pm New York time, the contract had already been halted twice ...

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• 12 December

  The British are taking back control of the boardroom

  

  The UK has long prided itself on being open for business. Its top 100 publicly traded companies derive most of their revenue from overseas and boast a higher proportion of foreign bosses than the US, Germany and France. But that diversity is starting to fade — just as Brexit looms large. Recruitment firm Robert Half estimated earlier this year that ...

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• 12 December

  Noodles give Hong Kong’s IPO market indigestion

  

  Not tech, not interested.That seems to be the mantra of investors in Hong Kong as an instant-noodle spinoff fell as much as 12.4 percent in its debut on Monday and Hebei Construction Group Corp. was said to price its IPO at the bottom of the indicative range. The unit of Nissin Foods Co. is just one of a handful of ...

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• 12 December

  Let US states lower Medicaid drug prices

  Drug prices are too high, and Congress lacks the political will to do anything about it. These are two of the most uncontroversial assertions in the contentious debate about US health care policy — and they explain why states should be allowed to act on their own. The high price of medicine is a familiar lament from presidents and pharmaceutical ...

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• 12 December

  Getting a college degree isn’t a waste of time

  

  In a recent Atlantic article, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan declares that college is, mostly, a waste of time. Caplan’s claim is sure to appeal to those who feel that their own higher education was wasted, or who dislike colleges because of liberal campus politics. But his arguments against college are deeply flawed, and the country would be well-advised ...

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• 12 December

  Uber deal cold comfort for S’pore’s fading taxis

  

  Miniatures of ComfortDelgro Corp. taxis are popular children’s toys in Singapore. Not for long, though. The ubiquitous blue and yellow Toyota Crown cabs are leaving the realm of kids’ imagination and heading for grownup nostalgia. One day soon, they’ll belong in a museum. The end is nigh for the conventional taxi business, though that’s not what Comfort said in a ...

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