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Bloomberg No stranger to gaffes, Romania’s prime minister is perhaps best known for one particularly glaring slip of the tongue not long into her tenure. Addressing colleagues at a government meeting in May — as well as a live online audience — Viorica Dancila proudly declared that “we’re reducing democracy.” Despite quickly correcting that last word to “bureaucracy,” the Internet ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s hardening line on immigration sets him on a collision course with House Democrats that is likely to shape the next presidential campaign. Trump’s first move following midterm elections in which he stoked fears of undocumented immigrants was to restrict asylum claims by people who illegally cross the US-Mexico border. He has also promised to try to ...

Bloomberg The convicted former prime minister of the Republic of Macedonia said he has fled to Hungary and applied for political asylum there, challenging Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s balancing act between mainstream European politics and its nationalist fringe. Orban faces a tough decision. He can grant asylum to Nikola Gruevski, the Macedonian leader who escaped to Hungary to avoid starting ...

America’s body politic has recently been scarred by excruciating political shingles, and 2018 campaigning was equivalent to acid reflux. But the elections indicated that some political antibodies are strengthening the nation’s immune system. November 6 was, on balance, deflating to Democrats, who learned — or perhaps not — that despising this president, although understandable, is insufficient. His comportment caused his ...

With Black Friday just around the corner, retailers are revealing their tactics for vacuuming up consumers’ holiday gift dollars. And with this year’s playbook, Amazon.com Inc. — often vaunted as the industry’s pacesetter — is surprisingly taking some cues from the old guard. The e-commerce giant’s first print toy catalog started making its way to shoppers’ mailboxes this week. Yes, ...

Telecom Italia SpA’s headquarters sits about 200 meters from the Porta Salaria, the city gate through which salt arrived in ancient Rome from the Adriatic coast. Some of that salt is being rubbed into the wounds of the aggrieved Italian carrier, which announced a 2 billion-euro impairment on the value of its home operations, partly a consequence of new competition ...

What does strongman showmanship look like? In India, it’s 25,000 tons of steel, 3,550 tons of bronze and 210,000 cubic meters of cement and concrete — towering over the world at a cost of about $400 million. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently unveiled the Statue of Unity in his home state of Gujarat. The likeness is of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, ...

There are no more sensitive topics in British politics than Brexit, tax avoidance and Russian interference. A Molotov cocktail of all three has catapulted businessman Arron Banks to a notoriety he could only have dreamt of when he started his campaign to leave the European Union (EU). Last week Banks’s campaign group and his company Eldon were fined for breaking ...

New-age financiers: Looking to do some good while earning a 51 percent yield? Indonesia’s the place. The nation of 260 million people is the perfect venue for fintech startups, from digital-credit-card providers to peer-to-peer lenders. Only half the over-15 population has bank accounts, while a paltry 2 percent hold credit cards. Traditional banks aren’t keen to enter the “subprime” consumer ...

After years of rumours and speculation, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd finally presented a smartphone with a foldable display that it plans to start selling next year. At the risk of sounding like a wide-eyed teenager, I consider this a potentially disruptive innovation on the scale of the iPhone—if the manufacturers can handle it right. The technology has been more or ...