Bloomberg The US drew up a list of associates of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who could be targeted with sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported, in what would amount to a fallback option if engagement fails to sway the illiberal leader to meet his NATO commitments. The sanctions threat emerged just a day after President Donald Trump praised Orban ...
Read More »May’s Brexit deal to return to parliament
Bloomberg Theresa May set a date for her final Brexit showdown, promising to bring her deal back to Parliament at the start of June. Talks with the opposition Labour Party haven’t yielded an agreement, but she’s hoping members of parliament, stung by voter revolts, will back her in order to end the process that’s tearing both main parties apart. “It’s ...
Read More »Vietnam denies having ‘prisoners of conscience’
Bloomberg Vietnam denied that it held any “prisoners of conscience,†calling an Amnesty International report that said the Communist government is jailing more of its critics “unfounded.†“Amnesty International has deliberately made repeated nonobjective, unfounded judgments based on wrongful information and false prejudices on Vietnam,†Le Thi Thu Hang, spokeswoman for Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), said. “This is ...
Read More »New generation of leaders shakes up Indian politics
Bloomberg Politics in India is undergoing a quiet revolution, driven by a handful of young candidates standing in the bitterly contested federal election. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-octane election campaign has occupied much of the media limelight, a band of millennials — reminiscent of the rise of young US Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — is becoming a counter to his ...
Read More »Danger of dabbling in protectionism
A man who worked in a boxer’s corner in a 1962 match against Cassius Clay, as he still was known, explained why the referee stopped the fight in the fourth round: “Things just went sour gradually all at once.” It can be like that when government dabbles in protectionism. US industrial capacity has never been larger — it is 66% ...
Read More »Ireland is being tech-shamed
“Only Facebook Ireland can respond to your concerns.†That is the response you are likely to get from Facebook Inc. if you accuse the world’s biggest social network of breaching Europe’s tough new laws on data privacy. The company’s European headquarters are in Ireland; data from its users in the region is officially controlled and processed there; and its lead ...
Read More »German driver is hitting brakes, pulls epic U-turn
Breaking up an indebted German conglomerate was never going to be easy, but ThyssenKrupp AG boss Guido Kerkhoff probably hoped an enduring share price bounce would help smooth the process. Instead, ThyssenKrupp’s stock tumbled about 45 percent since he announced a plan to split the company’s steel and capital goods activities in September. The shares touched a 15-year low this ...
Read More »One million species will disappear, if we let them
When the findings of a landmark UN report on biodiversity came out last week, the headlines ran the gamut from depressing to apocalyptic. One million species face extinction, readers were told. Almost a third of the world’s reef-forming coral species, more than a third of its marine mammals, and 40 percent of its amphibian species could die out. And that’s ...
Read More »The White Walkers of Brexit are riding again
It was the moment businesses exhaled and viewers switched the channel. On April 4, the UK parliament voted, by a margin of one, to ensure that the country wouldn’t leave the European Union (EU) without a deal. Brexit may or may not happen – but there would be no chaotic crashing out because parliament had vetoed it. Except, like a ...
Read More »Cruise control isn’t fast enough for Toyota
By the looks of it, Toyota Motor Corp. is holding steady, even as other carmakers flail. But some caution is warranted. Toyota has consistently outperformed its rivals over the last year as the industry struggles with everything from technology adoption to tariffs. Its shares are down just 5 percent in the past year, compared with its peers’ average of almost ...
Read More »