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Bloomberg Britain recorded a larger-than-forecast budget deficit in the first month of the new fiscal year as accelerating inflation pushed up debt costs and depressed consumer spending. Net borrowing was 10.4 billion pounds ($13.5 billion) in April, the highest for the month since 2014 and up 1.2 billion pounds from a year earlier. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted an 8.7 ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank is finding out just how hard it might be to avoid the heat in its home country this summer. In the past few days, Germans have been told that their government will push for the nation to get the next ECB presidency and that monetary policy is the cause of a “too weak” euro. Fresh ...

Center-left parties throughout the Western world have been tempted to pick dogmatic, hard-left leaders. In Europe, one after another party has succumbed to the temptation, though it has hurt their electoral chances. It seems illogical, but it may eventually pay off. The Spanish Socialists, the party that has been in government most since the country democratized, has just returned Pedro ...

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: The internet is not a fair place. And the current fight over “net neutrality” is not going to change that. For those of us whose eyes glaze over at the mention of net neutrality, here’s the basic principle: Companies such as Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. that sell internet connections shouldn’t ...

The newest hurdle for the American Health Care Act, which has yet to win over doctors, nurses, hospitals, health insurers, older people, Democrats and some Republican senators, is something called the “Jimmy Kimmel test.” The bill fails that, too. The shorthand arises from comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s tearful monologue earlier this month about his newborn son’s heart defect. Kimmel told his ...

Troops mutiny in Ivory Coast. Ebola resurfaces in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Zambia jails its most prominent opposition leader. Corruption deepens in South Africa. These recent headlines are a reminder that terrorism and violent extremism aren’t the only challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the Trump administration shows little interest in the continent beyond this narrow concern. That’s a mistake. ...

As anyone who’s attended an Indian wedding knows, we far too often leave vital organizational tasks till the last minute, then tackle them all in an enormous, frenetic rush. The countdown to the 1 July deadline for the introduction of India’s new goods and services tax, or GST, feels a lot like that. This is perhaps India’s most comprehensive and ...

It took S&P Global Ratings five extra years of hand-wringing to acknowledge that Indonesian sovereign debt was investment grade. Now that it has, expect the ripples to be felt in places other than the bond market. Fitch Ratings gave the Southeast Asian nation the all-important upgrade in December 2011. That was 14 years after the Asian crisis led 59 percent ...

When it comes to productivity, only two things are undebatable: that the official rate of US productivity growth has stalled since at least 2007, having started to slow before then, and that there is no consensus about why or what to do about it. There is, additionally, some broad consensus that without stronger productivity growth going forward, standards of living ...

Reuters Egypt’s stock market on Tuesday recovered some of the previous day’s heavy losses while Gulf bourses were weaker as investors booked profits ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, when trading volumes and liquidity often decrease. Cairo’s index rebounded 1.1 percent after tumbling 2.5 percent on Monday, its largest single-day decline since Jan. 19, after the central bank unexpectedly ...