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Bloomberg The Taliban has warned Afghan citizens to boycott presidential elections or face attacks at rallies, as the militant group nears a peace deal with the US. The polls are a “ploy to deceive the common people” because foreigners hold the ultimate decision-making power, according to a statement emailed by the group’s spokesman Yousef Ahmadi, referring to the US and ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump imposed further sanctions on Venezuela, freezing the government’s assets in the US and adding immigration restrictions in a move aimed at stepping up pressure on the regime of Nicolas Maduro. Property belonging to the Venezuelan government “may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in,” Trump said in an executive order by the White ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has not been shy about saying what he’s trying to do: prolong the economy’s expansion so that it creates more jobs for those who, in the past, have often felt left out. The Fed increasingly sees itself as a social agency dedicated to job creation. That — more than the effect on stock prices — ...

Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. Just 18 months into the job, John Flint has stepped down as CEO of HSBC Holdings Plc. It may be time for this lumbering giant to turn to an outsider rather than the homegrown veterans that the bank has typically chosen as its leaders. Flint was cut from the same cloth as his predecessors, having ...

It didn’t take long for the Donald Trump tweet. That you can get more than 7 Chinese yuan to the dollar for the first time since 2008 was always going to be a red rag to the White House bull in the escalating economic battle between Washington and China. The president tweeted — inevitably — that Beijing was a currency ...

After a messy selection process, the European Union’s finance ministers have picked Kristalina Georgieva as their candidate to lead the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Bulgarian economist, currently chief executive of the World Bank, has suitable credentials but it would be wrong of the IMF board to rubber stamp her nomination just because a European has always held the post. ...

Cuban socialism has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. So however much pain the Trump administration means to exact upon the island economy through a new bout of sanctions, the imminent demise of the autocrats in Havana seems unlikely. No doubt, the recent US-imposed measures, including a ban on cruises, restrictions on remittances and a green light for aggrieved ...

To call it brazen would be an understatement. A year ago, the European Commission fined Google parent Alphabet Inc. 4.3 billion euros ($4.8 billion) and ordered it to stop making its search engine the default on Android-powered smartphones. The tech behemoth presented its remedy: it will ask other search engines to pay for the privilege. When setting up their handsets, ...

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish clim-ate activist, recently ann- ounced that she will cross the Atlantic Ocean by boat to attend a United Nations global warming summit in New York. She does not believe in flying in airplanes, for the obvious reason that air travel is a contributor to the carbon emissions problem. I am here with a simple message: ...

Bloomberg US equity futures rose alongside European stocks while Asian shares fell after China moved to stabilise its currency, helping ease some of the market turmoil that kicked off the week. The global sell-off in equities abated after China fixed its yuan exchange rate at stronger than 7 per dollar, a key level that when breached in markets fuelled the ...