Nato prepares to add Finland, Sweden to northern defenses

Bloomberg Nato members rallied around Finland and Sweden after they announced plans to join the alliance, marking another dramatic change in Europe’s security architecture triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Parliaments in the Nordic nations debated the membership, with a large majority of lawmakers in each country now backing the bid. Over the weekend, most Nato foreign ministers who had ...

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Ukraine’s Kuleba rules out offering Putin options for ceasefire

Bloomberg Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba ruled out potential concessions to Russia that could lead to a cease-fire in the war with Russia and said the European Union faces “moral failure” if it doesn’t approve the nation’s candidacy for membership by June. Kuleba declined to comment on whether French President Emmanuel Macron urged his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to accept ...

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Scholz’s SPD slumps to worst result in biggest German state

Bloomberg Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party lost a regional election for the second straight week, suffering a fresh blow amid wavering support for the German chancellor’s Ukraine policy. The Christian Democrats, the main opposition party at the national level, were projected to take 35.7% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, maintaining their hold over Germany’s most-populous state. In its former ...

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Yellen says world faces food crisis due to war

  Bloomberg US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a global crisis by exacerbating food security issues for the whole world. “The war is having an impact beyond Ukraine and it’s something that we’re very concerned about,” she said in Warsaw. “I’m afraid we really have a global crisis on our hands.” Wheat jumped by ...

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Goldman’s Blankfein says US at ‘very, very high risk’ of recession

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Senior Chairman Lloyd Blankfein urged companies and consumers to gird for a US recession, saying it’s a “very, very high risk.” “If I were running a big company, I would be very prepared for it,” Blankfein said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “If I was a consumer, I’d be prepared for it.” A recession is “not ...

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Dutch government weighs salary cap on expat tax benefit

Bloomberg The Dutch government is working on a plan to introduce a maximum salary threshold for expatriates who want to take advantage of a tax break, according to two people familiar with the matter. The government is planning to allow only individuals earning less than 216,000 euros ($224,000) a year to apply for a benefit that exempts 30% of an ...

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Inflation storm to cost average UK household $2,900 this year

  Bloomberg Surging inflation will pile £2,370 ($2,900) on to the bills of the average UK household this year, according to a new study, raising fresh pressure on the Bank of England (BOE) and government to step up their response to the cost of living crunch. With wages falling behind price gains and the government raising taxes, the report from ...

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Norway’s quarterly GDP shrinks

  Bloomberg Norway’s economy contracted as expected at the beginning of the year, while a rebound after removal of virus-related measures bolstered the outlook for quarterly interest rate hikes by Norges Bank. Mainland gross domestic product, which adjusts for the nation’s offshore industry, shrank 0.6 percent in the first quarter from the previous three months, dented by the last pandemic ...

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Venezuelan telecom rallies on Maduro plan to list state assets

  Bloomberg Shares in Venezuela’s state-owned telecommunications company soared this week in Caracas as the government announced plans to offer stakes in public companies, boosting expectations for a revival in the local market. Cia. Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela SA, or CANTV, surged 41% in two days, according to Caracas Stock Exchange data, after President Nicolas Maduro said his government ...

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Euro is on the verge of US dollar parity for first time in 20 years

  Bloomberg The euro is on the verge of US dollar parity for the first time in two decades. Europe’s common currency has already slumped to a five-year low near $1.03, buckling from a rush into the greenback as a haven from market turmoil and on the war in Ukraine. That’s led the likes of HSBC Holdings Plc and RBC ...

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