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Bloomberg CIA Director Mike Pompeo travelled to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un in advance of a possible summit on denuclearisation, President Donald Trump said. “Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Trump said in a Twitter posting Wednesday morning. “Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearisation will be a great thing for ...

Bloomberg Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s former prime minister, left for London ahead of a looming verdict on corruption charges he and his daughter Maryam face amid mounting signs of a military-led clamp down on the media. Maryam said they will visit her mother who is undergoing cancer treatment in the UK capital, posting pictures on Twitter of her father sitting in ...

Bloomberg African troops battling an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia for the past decade stand little chance of withdrawing by their deadline in two years as the government remains fragile and a spike in militant violence has drawn in US forces. The longest-running African Union peacekeeping mission, known as Amisom, operates in a shattered country whose lawlessness has bred regional violence ...

Bloomberg Barbara Bush, the wife of one US president and mother of another who embodied the old-fashioned sensibility that family comes before careers or politics, has died. She was 92. She died on April 17, according to a statement from family spokesman Jim McGrath. No cause was given. Bush, who was in “failing health,” decided to no longer seek medical ...

Bloomberg India’s cash machines are running dry, leaving policy makers and bankers scrambling to assuage the public and prevent perception about the nation’s fraud-hit financial system from worsening. As the banknote shortage spread across several states, the government finally addressed the issue in a statement, where it cited an “unusual spurt in demand” for cash. The Finance Ministry rolled out ...

Bloomberg Germany’s public-sector workers and employers have agreed on a three-step series of wage hikes, providing the European Central Bank with fresh evidence of inflation-boosting pay deals and averting the threat of more disruptive strikes. Wages for 2.3 million workers in federal and local governments will rise by an annual 3.19 percent on average retroactive to March, by another 3.09 ...

Bloomberg Investors are losing faith in the Bank of England delivering two interest-rate increases this year as UK economic data does little to suggest a full-blown tightening cycle is needed. While a hike in May is still almost fully priced in by markets, the chances of a second in 2018 fell further on Wednesday after inflation slowed to the weakest ...

Bloomberg China’s banks stand to make higher profits from the government’s move to fine-tune monetary policy by slashing their reserve requirements. Banking shares jumped. The resulting drop in funding costs will boost the net interest margin of listed Chinese banks by 0.9 basis point and lift their profits by 0.6 percent, according to analysts at China International Capital Corp. Industrial ...

Bloomberg The franc may be close to the Swiss National Bank’s previous currency ceiling, but that doesn’t mean investors should expect an interest rate hike too soon. A monthly survey of economists shows they anticipate the Swiss central bank will keep its deposit rate at minus 0.75 percent the first nine months of 2019, before raising it by 25 basis ...

Bloomberg Inflation is showing signs of taking root in Japan. With price gains halfway to the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent target, domestic demand is picking up after years in which external factors such as energy prices did most of the work. As the economy continues to grow, this could open the door for the central bank to start adjusting ...