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Bloomberg The Solomon Islands broke diplomatic ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing, leaving the democratically run island with just 16 diplomatic partners amid China’s efforts to isolate it. It’s the seventh nation — and the first in the Pacific — to establish ties with Beijing since Taiwan’s independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen was elected in January 2016. Reuters reported earlier ...

Bloomberg As many as 800,000 Iranians are set to lose cash handouts within the next month as US-imposed sanctions take their toll on the Islamic Republic’s economy. Iran plans to wean up to 30 million people off cash subsidies in the long term, but it “cannot take them off under the current economic situation,” said government spokesman Ali Rabiei at ...

Bloomberg Myanmar’s powerful military should be brought before the International Court of Justice for its continued role in grave violations against ethnic groups including Rohingya Muslims, the United Nations fact-finding mission concluded on Monday following a two-year investigation. The final report — to be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva — details the ongoing systematic use of murder, ...

The masked men who recently tossed firebombs at Jimmy Lai’s home targeted one of this city’s foremost democracy advocates. Lai, a 71-year-old media billionaire, calls this summer’s ongoing protest “a martyrdom movement” and “a last-straw movement.” It has an intensity and dynamic that bewilders the protesters’ opponents in Beijing and in Hong Kong’s Beijing-obedient city administration. Today’s mostly young protesters ...

The declining economic outlook and increasing political pressure are pushing central banks into more aggressive unconventional monetary policies. Simultaneously, fears are growing that such steps, especially negative interest rates, actually threaten the stability of the financial system. They risk setting off dangerous feedback loops in credit markets and the real economy, where the second and third-order effects are difficult to ...

Donald Trump’s persistent attacks on the Federal Reserve raise an important question: What should and shouldn’t presidents say about the central bank? The key is to understand the difference between the concepts of independence and accountability. It’s crucial that the Fed enjoy independence from elected officials in deciding how to pursue the goals that Congress set out for it — ...

Mario Draghi’s public scolding of Europe’s lenders this week matters more than what he did for them. Banks in the region have long complained of the squeeze negative interest rates are putting on their profits — upending their traditional business model of borrowing money for the short term to lend to clients in the long run. But there’s little they ...

President Donald Trump would love nothing more than to announce an end to the trade war with China and relief for the country’s farmers, who have been hit especially hard. But history is likely to get in the way for reasons well beyond his control. In the past century, American agriculture sustained two big boom-and-bust cycles. The current downturn features ...

Homebuilding has been a better bet than the wider construction business in the UK — the former benefits from government subsidies, while the latter is plagued by intense competition for long-run, hard-to-value contracts. Being in both markets has become a headache for Galliford Try Plc. It is now artfully dealing its way out of the problem. Last week, the company ...

Apple is finally getting real. With its most important product category not growing anymore, Apple Inc. confronted its changing circumstances by doing two unusual things: hustling hard and displaying a willingness to change its business model. The hustle is all about Apple’s willingness to do something against its nature: go wide in the number of devices and internet-tethered products it ...