September, 2016

• 6 September

  Myanmar Buddhists jeer ex-UN chief on peace mission

    Sittwe / AFP Hundreds of Buddhists jeered former UN chief Kofi Annan as he arrived in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state on Tuesday to examine a bitter religious conflict that has displaced tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya. Annan has been tasked by the de facto leader of Myanmar’s new government, Aung San Suu Kyi, to head a commission charged with ...

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• 6 September

  France urges Gabon vote recount as top minister quits

  

    Libreville/ AFP Pressure mounted on Gabon’s President Ali Bongo over his disputed poll victory on Tuesday as his justice minister resigned over the results and former colonial ruler France suggested a recount. With Bongo claiming victory by a wafer-thin margin of some 6,000 votes, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls proposed recounting the ballots. “There needs to be a clear electoral ...

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• 6 September

  Mapping Britain’s exit from Europe

  

    In the two months since Britain voted to leave the European Union, its government has done little to clarify where this project is going. It would be wrong to expect a detailed plan, because the terms of exit and whatever arrangements follow must be negotiated. But surely a statement setting out priorities and basic principles wasn’t too much to ...

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• 6 September

  Financial risk is worse when you can’t see it

    Financial crises are becoming more frequent as markets and the rules that govern them grow ever more complex. New research suggests that this is no coincidence — and that a simpler system would be a lot more resilient. Forward-thinking officials have long argued that financial regulation needs to be simpler. In his much-quoted speech “The Dog and the Frisbee,” ...

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• 6 September

  The world might not be ready for quantum computers

    Quantum mechanics, Carl Sagan once observed, is so strange that “common sense is almost useless in approaching it.” Scientists still don’t understand exactly why matter behaves as it does at the quantum level. Yet they’re getting better at exploiting its peculiar dynamics — in ways that may soon upend the technology business. One of the most interesting applications is ...

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• 6 September

  It’s high time for a clear Brexit roadmap

    Brexit pressure is mounting on Theresa May and the British Prime Minister will have to cross the molehills before she hits the mountain ahead. While Japan has warned that its companies might walk out if they don’t get access to the single market in the UK, the US has shown its reluctance to enter into a trade deal with ...

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• 6 September

  India presents dim bright spot for global economy

  

    India’s just-released GDP figures show it’s still the world’s fastest-growing large economy. Over the past decade or so, those numbers have swooped and stuttered —from the boom years of the mid-2000s, when easy money and roaring demand pushed growth up to nearly double digits, to the hard stop at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, to the dramatic, ...

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• 6 September

  Don’t muzzle judicial candidates on politics

    Just about the only thing dumber than judicial elections is trying to regulate what judges can say when they’re running for office. Last year, the Supreme Court struggled with this problem in a case about judicial fundraising. Now an appeals court has struck down elements of Kentucky’s nonpartisan judicial election rules that try to regulate how judges can talk ...

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• 6 September

  Russian deal with Japan may be possible soon

  

    Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be more open than ever to a compromise with Japan that would end the two countries’ post-World War II territorial dispute. Both sides have been making tentative moves toward reconciliation since May, and a deal may finally be in the works after decades of false starts. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Putin ...

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• 6 September

  Gulf mixed in quiet trade, Saudi rebound fades

  

    Dubai / Reuters Gulf stock markets were mixed in quiet trade on Tuesday as Riyadh’s bourse pulled back after rising sharply on the previous day, when Saudi Arabia and Russia said they would cooperate to support oil prices. Riyadh’s stock index gained early on Tuesday but closed 0.2 percent lower at 6,190 points, failing a test of technical resistance ...

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