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  LONDON / AP Since Britain voted to leave the European Union, UK officials have had one message: Brexit means Brexit. Now they have EU leaders’ reply: And it’s going to hurt. The prime minister of Malta, whose country is about to assume the EU presidency, is the latest leader to dash Britain’s hopes of an easy divorce, signaling that ...

  Bloomberg Actelion Ltd. said that Johnson & Johnson has approached it about a potential takeover of the $17 billion Swiss drugmaker, as the US health-care giant works to expand its pharmaceutical lineup. Actelion confirmed the approach in a statement and said it’s not certain that a deal will happen. Actelion is working with an adviser to explore options, and ...

  Lowering the corporate tax rate appears to be all the rage. Donald Trump has promised a cut to 15 percent from 35 percent in the U.S., and British Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to make the U.K.’s corporate tax the lowest in the G-20, which would mean taking it lower than Trump intends to. On the surface, it ...

  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is willing to try just about anything to get his company back into China. Publicly, he launched a charm offensive that included learning Mandarin and offering Chinese President Xi Jinping the chance to name his first child (he declined). Less publicly, but no less important, the New York Times reports that his company has developed tools ...

  On Sunday, France’s Republican Party will choose its candidate for the presidential election next spring. Opinion polls say that the Republicans are so far ahead that the party, in effect, is about to name the next president — either Alain Juppe or Francois Fillon, former prime ministers offering not-too-dissimilar conservative programs. The polls, for once, had better be right. ...

  Environmentalists are stepping up their campaign to ban plastic microbeads, which are polluting our seas and killing marine life. These are also entering our food chain. What are plastic microbeads? They are tiny plastic particles which are found in cosmetics — including facial scrubs, exfoliators, shower gels and toothpastes — and household products as well as industrial processes. A ...

  The Chancellor is right to keep his powder dry” was George Osborne’s comment on the mini-budget presented this week by Philip Hammond, his successor at the head of the U.K. Treasury. That’s probably correct given the cloud of uncertainty the Brexit vote is casting over the economy. If he waits too long, however, Hammond risks missing an opportunity to ...

  Why has so much of the world succumbed to populist demagoguery and xenophobic nationalism? To a non-trivial extent, economists may be responsible. This idea finds some support in a new book, The Econocracy, written by three U.K. economics students — Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins. They argue that popular dissatisfaction with government has a lot to do ...

Barry Ritholtz I keep promising to stop writing about lessons from the election that are applicable to markets, and then I keep finding more examples. So rather than make any promises I cannot keep, let’s just jump right into this. Since Donald Trump’s surprise victory — though it wasn’t a surprise to those of you with the power of hindsight ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa offered pilots a new wage deal to end a crippling three-day strike that has led to mass flight cancellations affecting over 300,000 passengers. However the pilots’ union Cockpit swiftly rejected the new offer. The airline said it had been forced to cancel more than 2,700 flights since the start of the walkout, ...