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  Berlin / AFP Should Germany’s popular Christmas markets be ringed with concrete, patrolled by armed soldiers and screened with surveillance cameras? After a truck ploughed through a crowd of holiday revellers in central Berlin, the country—having so far been spared large-scale attacks—is debating the balance between security and an open society. “This attack could have been prevented if the ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korea’s Constitutional Court will Thursday start hearings into whether to confirm the impeachment of President Park Geun-Hye, with her ruling conservative party deeply split on the issue before a likely fresh election. The court has up to 180 days to decide whether to uphold or reject parliament’s impeachment of the country’s first female president on ...

  Tokyo/ AFP A deal to return American military land on Okinawa to the Japanese government was hailed on Wednesday as the biggest such land transfer in more than four decades. But the move is unlikely to reduce frustration on the strategic island that remains crowded with American bases—a legacy of World War II. The agreement covers about 4,000 hectares ...

  The past year was dominated by the bitter presidential election. But during the precious, brief moments when I was able to unplug from the madness and read about economics, I found a lot of great material. Here’s a list of 10 excellent economics books and papers I read in 2016 that should be accessible to the general public. 1. ...

  It had become something of a ritual. Every three years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development would release the results of its PISA exams, which are given to hundreds of thousands of students in dozens of countries. And every three years, an American freak-out would ensue, as Chinese students seemed to be outperforming their U.S. counterparts by a ...

  Any conversation with a European bank executive these days quickly turns to talk of how their US rivals are in better shape. American banks were much quicker in bolstering their capital bases after the financial crisis; they also have more regulatory certainty (in part because they didn’t challenge every proposed rule change). And in at least one corner of ...

  San Francisco / AFP Volkswagen has reached a $1 billion agreement with US authorities on a compensation deal for the last 80,000 vehicles affected by its emissions-cheating scandal in the United States, officials said. However, a Justice Department official said a criminal investigation is ongoing, and charges may still be filed against the company — which could bring new ...

  Bloomberg Nike Inc. posted second-quarter results that surpassed analysts’ estimates, soothing concerns that the world’s largest sports brand is losing ground to competitors such as Adidas AG and Under Armour Inc. Profit was 50 cents a share in the period, which ended Nov. 30, Nike said in a statement. That compared with the 43-cent average of analysts’ projections. Sales ...

  Bloomberg UK house-price inflation will slow in 2017 as affordability stretches potential buyers, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Values will rise just 3 percent and the number of transactions will see a moderate decline, RICS said in a statement on Wednesday. That compares with a year-on-year price increase of 6.9 percent in October, according to the ...

  Bloomberg BlackBerry Ltd. boosted its fiscal 2017 earnings outlook and posted a profit in the third quarter, showing the company’s bet on moving more into software and completely away from handsets is paying off. Fiscal third-quarter earnings per share, excluding some items, were 2 cents, compared with analysts’ average estimate of a loss of 1 cent. BlackBerry said it ...