Croatia stands on the cusp of World Cup victory

FOOTBALLERS as soldiers of the nation, violence in the stands that heralded war, outrageous corruption and fans belting out fascistic slogans: Croatian football has been a dramatic affair for the past three decades. In few other countries are politics and the beautiful game as closely entwined. When Croatia beat Russia on July 7th its president gyrated for joy in front of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister. With reason: she, her party and other Croatian political parties have all benefitted from football-related election financing. On July 15th Croatia’s footballers, spurred on to avenge defeat at the hands of France in the World Cup semi-finals in 1998, take on les bleus again in Moscow.

“Football victories shape a nation’s identity as much as wars do,” said Franjo Tudjman, independent Croatia’s first president and the man who led the country through the traumatic disintegration of Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s. It is sometimes said that Croatia’s war of...Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2mgeU6I
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Trade Tensions Help BMW Enter China's Fast Lane

German company could become the first foreign car maker to majority own its operations in China.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2NfLrFo
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Fear of Missing Out Drives Stock Performance

Fear of being left behind is a powerful force among fund managers, even if it means taking big risks.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2KUDxoo
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

China's Land Grab Could End Badly

Investment in China is faltering just as trade tensions heat up. But the situation is actually even worse than it appears—a sign the long-awaited hit from China’s debt crackdown has arrived.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2NfLpxg
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Robert Mueller indicts 12 more Russians

IF ALL America can be said to have been under attack when hijackers turned four airliners on it in 2001, the assault Russian agents launched on American democracy in 2016 represented a full-blown war. The 12 fresh charges against Russian intelligence officers unveiled by the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, on July 13th, offered a few important new details about that attack, confirmed many long-held fears, and suggested there may be much more of the scandal to unfold.

A previous round of indictments against Russian hackers, which then as now sprang from the investigations of Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating the Russian attack, suggested it was audacious and flagrant but relatively limited. It focused on a godless Russian effort to flood social media with images of Jesus rooting for Donald Trump and Satan for Hillary Clinton. The latest indictment points to a much more complicated, multifarious effort to swing the election for Mr Trump.

It included hacking the computer systems of Mrs Clinton’s...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2miDwMk
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The Dutch underground bicycle-park arms race

It was a black one

THE trilling of spokes, cyclists rounding the bend in unison: no, this is not the Tour de France. It is the new underground bicycle park at Utrecht Central railway station, which opened last year. Three storeys deep, with electronic monitors indicating where spaces are available, it has room to park 7,500 bicycles. “It’s a bit of a maze,” says Xander Staal, who takes a picture of his bike’s berth as an aide-memoire each morning before commuting to Amsterdam.

The Netherlands is experiencing an underground bike-park boom, as cities race each other to build the largest. The Hague had hoped to overtake Utrecht this spring with a new park with 8,500 places, but that has been delayed by construction problems. Later this year Utrecht’s park will expand to 12,500 slots, surpassing a 9,400-space one in Tokyo to become the largest in the world. Amsterdam is playing catch-up: a 4,000-space garage is to be built next to its central...Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2mcuVun
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

An interview with Germany’s finance minister, Olaf Scholz

Scholz may have a plan

FOLLOWING a dismal campaign, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) fell to their lowest post-war result in Germany’s general election last September. Early this year they quarrelled over whether to enter another coalition with Angela Merkel. Lefties warned that without a spell in opposition to formulate more distinct policies, the party would be doomed. But the leadership won over members at a vote in March with promises of renewal within government, greater distance from the centre-right, investment increases and, most of all, a “European awakening” beside Emmanuel Macron, the French president.

As the new SPD finance minister and vice-chancellor, Olaf Scholz has more power to enact that plan than anyone else. He is widely tipped to be the party’s candidate for chancellor at the next election, which is due to take place in 2021 but may come sooner. Yet talking to The Economist in his office in the finance...Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2zyhK0y
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Emmanuel Macron’s popularity hits a new low

A YEAR ago, as a young freshly elected president eager to look the part, Emmanuel Macron summoned a joint sitting of both houses of parliament in the former royal palace at Versailles, and spoke loftily of grandeur and destiny. On July 9th, for his second speech to Congress, it was a more humble head of state who stepped into the chamber. “I know that I can’t do everything,” he declared, “I know that I won’t succeed in everything.” The setting was unchanged, but the tone was markedly different. A chastened president, it seems, is trying to recover his touch.

In a stiflingly hot chamber, as parliamentarians fanned their moist faces, Mr Macron sent two broad messages. First, that the president, so often accused of arrogance, is in fact listening. He spoke of voters’ anger and fear, of those who feel they are “ignored, held in contempt”, and struggle to make ends meet. Results, he warned, could take time to come through. But he would keep trying. Jupiter, in other words, may still be...Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2KSfmqG
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

How policy debates in Europe become untethered from reality

IN 2016 the election of an American president with a wilful disregard for the truth inspired some observers to return to “On Bullshit”, a monograph on hot air written in 1986 by Harry Frankfurt, a philosopher. Europeans delight in this sort of thing. They enjoy contrasting the “fake news” and “alternative facts” that characterise the Trump administration with their own, more honest, brand of politics. Yet they should not be so sanguine. Worryingly, bovine waste seems to be spreading in Europe.

Take the recent spat in Germany, where Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, came close to blowing up the coalition between his Bavaria-based Christian Social Union and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. Although migrant arrivals in Germany have plummeted, Mr Seehofer wanted to turn back from the southern frontier asylum-seekers registered in other countries, an action that could have triggered a domino effect of border controls elsewhere. Denied by Mrs Merkel, Mr Seehofer...Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2NbDMYQ
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Is North Korea the next Vietnam? Don’t count on it

Even stockmarket bulls are more cautious than at the start of the year

BEARS sound clever; bulls make money. This piece of financial acumen, imparted by a trader to a colleague, is hard to beat for brevity. It also makes a good point. There is something about market pessimism that endows bears with an aura of wisdom that is not always deserved. The cautious sound clever because they appear to have weighed the odds. Optimists seem heedless by comparison. Yet it is only by taking on risk that investors can hope to make money.

So it is telling that even bulls are now sounding cautious. The economy and stockmarket in America have had a good run, after all. The expansion, which started in 2009, is now the second-longest on record. Unemployment is low. The Federal Reserve is hawkish. This mix tends to kill a bull market sooner rather than later. The question is how much further stocks can rise. Is there still time for bulls to make money? Or will being a bear save you money as well as make you sound clever?

In this debate, each side has a distinctive way of looking at...Continue reading

from Economics https://ift.tt/2NbTx1T
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Why the euro zone hasn’t seen more cross-border bank mergers

MERGERS of euro-area banks from different countries, a banker jokes, are “very much like teenage sex. There’s a lot of talk, but little action. And when it does happen, there’s a lot of disappointment.” In recent months gossip has linked each of France’s three biggest banks (BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale), as well as UniCredit, Italy’s largest, with Commerzbank, Germany’s second-biggest listed bank. Lately chatter has connected UniCredit and Société Générale. But no big, cross-border takeover is imminent.

A stream of deals in the 2000s—notably UniCredit’s purchase of HypoVereinsbank, another leading German lender, in 2005—has slowed to a trickle (see chart, top panel). Policymakers at both the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) would like the flow to revive. The euro area’s banking markets are still essentially national ones. “European banking remains as fragmented today as it was in 2012,” notes Magdalena Stoklosa...Continue reading

from Economics https://ift.tt/2NbTu6d
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Development-impact bonds are costly, cumbersome—and good

IF A girl in a poor country goes to school, she will probably have a more comfortable life than if she stays at home. She will be less likely to marry while still a child, and therefore less likely to die in childbirth. So, not surprisingly, there is an Indian charity that tries to get girls into school and ensure they learn something, and there are Western philanthropists willing to pay for its work. What is noteworthy is how they have gone about this transaction.

On July 13th the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, presents the results of the world’s first large development-impact bond, which paid for girls’ education in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. In this novel way of funding charitable work, a financial institution gives money to a charity, which tries to achieve various specified outcomes. If a neutral arbiter rules that it has succeeded, a donor or philanthropist repays the investor, plus a bonus. If it fails, the investor loses some or all of its money.

This is...Continue reading

from Economics https://ift.tt/2KW73u9
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Donald Trump insists on trade reciprocity. But what kind?

IN THE sixth episode of “The Apprentice”, a reality-television show first broadcast in 2004, Donald Trump, as always, fired a contestant vying for a job in his company. She was, he said, the worst negotiator. And she had failed to fight back when belittled by her teammate. The episode was entitled “Tit For Tat”.

That same principle of reciprocity guides Mr Trump’s trade policy as president. And it is animating his tariff war with China. On July 6th America imposed 25% duties on Chinese imports worth about $34bn. (Another $16bn-worth will be hit in due course.) China responded by slapping tariffs on a similar amount of American goods (including a cargo of soyabeans aboard the Peak Pegasus that arrived at the port of Dalian mere hours later).

The two sides disagree, however, about which is tit and which tat. China believes it is responding dollar-for-dollar to American aggression. But America too believes it is retaliating: punishing China for trade and...Continue reading

from Economics https://ift.tt/2zxl7VC
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Mini-grids could be a boon to poor people in Africa and Asia

A FORESTED village in Jharkhand state, eastern India, Narotoli is home mainly to adherents of Sarna, a nature-worshipping tribal religion. In more ways than one, it has long been off-grid. Drive past a police checkpoint a few miles away and you are in territory loyal to “the guys”, a euphemism for Maoist guerrillas. That makes Narotoli more marginalised than most places. A few months ago it became one of the last in India to benefit from a push by Narendra Modi, the prime minister, to supply electricity to all the country’s villages. But the power lines are so “reliably unreliable”, says an Indian executive, that they might as well be washing lines.

Two years before the grid arrived, however, Mlinda, a social enterprise, had set up a “mini-grid”, a bank of batteries charged by solar panels and hooked up to homes, to guarantee round-the-clock power independent of the national network. Mini-grids are different from the rooftop solar panels and batteries (sometimes linked up in...Continue reading

from Economics https://ift.tt/2L6LxSG
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Drug Supply Chain Feels the Trump Effect

Pfizer’s decision to defer drug price increases could ripple through the drug supply chain, which benefits when drug prices go up.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2uCacEr
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The case against impeachment

ALAN DERSHOWITZ has had a pair of alternative covers mocked up for his new book, “The Case Against Impeaching Trump”. On one, which the celebrity legal scholar means to brandish as proof that his pre-emptive defence of President Donald Trump is apolitical, the word “Trump” has been replaced with “Clinton”. A lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the 79-year-old Harvard man says he is “still devastated” that she lost the election and would be making the same constitutionally grounded argument on her behalf had she won. The other option is a humorous acknowledgment that not many in Mr Dershowitz’s thinning crowd of liberal friends and admirers are likely to be impressed by that. To encourage at least furtive reading of his book, the second mock-cover is a plain brown paper wrapper, “like they used to use to cover pornography”.

No one need feel sorry for him. Mr Dershowitz, once a brilliant scholar and defender of celebrity clients, including Claus von...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2ztNmUW
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Brett Kavanaugh could shape the law for the next 40 years

Have you heard the one about the emoluments clause?

BRETT KAVANAUGH, President Donald Trump’s second nomination to the Supreme Court in as many years, enjoys coaching girls’ basketball and feeding the homeless. He has twin degrees from Yale. He clerked for three judges, including Anthony Kennedy, the man he will probably replace. Since 2006 he has been a judge on the second-most powerful tribunal in America, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Mr Kavanaugh is highly qualified, an unremarkable choice for a Republican president. Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio might have picked him.

Yet Mr Kavanaugh is also a political animal. He worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel charged with investigating Bill Clinton’s liaison with Monica Lewinsky and the suicide of Vince Foster, a friend and colleague of the Clintons. Mr Starr’s report, partly written by Mr Kavanaugh, set out the case for impeachment. Mr Kavanaugh then worked in George W. Bush’s...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2mc4ODW
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

What Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ought to talk about in Helsinki

Low-yield curve

FECKLESS freeloaders they may be, but none of America’s NATO partners has displayed graphics of missiles raining down on Florida, or designed a torpedo which could cover the west coast in radioactive sludge, rendering it uninhabitable. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has done both. To judge by Russia’s rhetoric and declared intentions, and by the increasing role of nuclear weapons in both countries’ strategic calculations, the meeting between Mr Putin and President Donald Trump in Helsinki comes at a fateful time, though there is little evidence that such thoughts are uppermost in Mr Trump’s mind. He likes strongmen, thinks America and Russia should do business and does not care for Ukraine. He has already shaken hands with Kim Jong Un, so why not Mr Putin? However, there is a lot that America and Russia ought to be talking about.

For people who still believe in negotiated disarmament, the summit is a last chance. Kingston Reif of the Arms Control...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2mcuekL
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Worker shortages could heal America’s economy

SINCE 2015 many hawks have continually suggested that the American economy is at or close to maximum sustainable employment. They have some explaining to do. Fully 5.8m more Americans are in work than in December of that year, when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates. That is two-thirds as many as lost their jobs during the Great Recession. In May the unemployment rate fell to 3.8%, its lowest for 18 years (it has since risen back to 4%). Yet the economy has not yet overheated. Only recently has inflation hit or exceeded 2%, the Fed’s target, for three straight months—and that is partly because of a worldwide recovery in oil prices.

Nevertheless, the hand-wringing has continued. The latest supposed problem is a labour shortage. For the first time since data began to be collected in 2000, there are more job openings than there are unemployed workers (see chart). Nearly 90% of small businesses who are hiring or trying to hire workers report that there are few or no qualified applicants,...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2upcR4b
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Why a mayor in Lebanon has dressed policewomen in hot pants

Officers but no gentlemen

THE mayor of Broumana, Pierre Achkar, has a problem. Rich tourists from the Gulf, who spend big and stay long, no longer holiday in his mountain town. The mayor wants to entice tourists from the West to plug the gap, but Lebanon’s reputation for violence and instability keeps them away, he says. His solution: to hire young women as police officers and dress them up in black hot pants.

“People in the West don’t visit Lebanon because they think it’s a country of Islamic extremism,” explains Mr Achkar. “We want to show that we have the same way of life as the West. You wear shorts and we wear shorts. We have democracy. Our women are free.” The mayor’s stunt has caused a stir and split opinion. Some are pleased, but others say it exposes the young women to sexual harassment, or worry that they will distract drivers and cause road accidents. The mayor is undaunted. “Why would we hire ugly girls?” he asks.

The new hires...Continue reading

from Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2KSWhon
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Saudi women want more sway in religious affairs

TO KEEP women quiet, Saudi Arabia’s clerical hierarchy once damned their voices as awra, an Arabic word for genitalia. The late Sheikh Abdelaziz Bin Baz, the kingdom’s top official cleric, opined that women should stay at home to reduce the risk of adultery. In 1994 he ordered the kingdom’s withdrawal from a UN conference because its support for equality between the sexes was “against God’s law”.

Two decades on Saudi female scholars are widely heard. They are penetrating the courts, mosques and universities, and can be heard giving sermons online. Nawal al-Eid, a preacher with her own women’s centre in Riyadh, has 5m followers on Twitter, more than almost any male cleric. “As long as you are qualified, you can speak up,” says Noura al-Hassawi, the director of research at Princess Nourah University’s Islamic Sciences department, the kingdom’s largest for women. “As a scholar, my opinion is equal to a man’s.”

Secular Saudi...Continue reading

from Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2N8wK7a
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The fight against Islamic State is moving to Africa

THEIR hair tightly braided, two young girls sleep head-to-toe in matching pink dresses with gold trim—a sight to gladden the heart were it not for the startling white bandages around their arms and legs. The beds in this ward are overflowing with patients, the rounded stumps of their amputated limbs pointing at the ceiling. Colour-coded tags hang near the door to sort casualties: red for the most urgent cases, black for those beyond help. They attest to the grim efficiency of the surgeons from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), gained from dealing with the unrelenting flow of bomb and gunshot victims. Their clinic is, perhaps, the only thing that works well in Maiduguri.

Nigeria’s main north-eastern city is at the centre of a series of jihadist campaigns stretching in two broad belts across Africa on either side of the Sahara. The northern one hugs the Mediterranean, from Egypt through Libya and Tunisia to Algeria. The southern one extends from Somalia and Kenya in the east...Continue reading

from Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2KPcScx
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Transcript: Interview with General Mark Hicks

MAJOR GENERAL MARK HICKS, who commands about 1,200 special-operations troops assigned to missions in Africa, spoke with The Economist in Niger on April 9th on the sidelines of Flintlock, a military training exercise. He was joined in the discussion by several members of his staff. Below is a transcript of parts of the interview. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Some of General Hicks’s comments are included in an Economist report on security in the Sahel that can be found here. A leader on the issue is available here.

The Economist: What is your area of biggest concern at the moment?

General Hicks: I’m concerned about youth bulges in...Continue reading

from Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2N9XtjF
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Latin America’s new media are growing up

DURING Nicaragua’s current unrest, the president, Daniel Ortega, tried a tactic that had worked before. In León, a stronghold of government support, thugs loyal to his Sandinista regime tried to put university students onto buses heading for Managua, the capital, to use them to help suppress protests there. The students refused. They had seen videos of police beating demonstrators and wanted no part of it. Their resistance, reported on independent news websites, inspired more protests. 

After Mr Ortega was elected in 2006 he sold half of the state broadcasting channels, put his children in charge of the other half and let his wife (who is also his vice-president) drone on for 20 minutes a day on national television. But a proliferation of social-media pages are covering the protests, while more established outlets, like 100% Noticias, a TV news channel, have stopped censoring themselves. “People are no longer interested in news provided by the regime,” says Carlos Fernando...Continue reading

from Americas https://ift.tt/2utxgEW
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Daniel Ortega is causing a bloodbath in Nicaragua

IT BEGAN three months ago with a protest against cuts in pensions decreed by Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president. Now his Central American country is witnessing a full-blown civil insurrection with mass casualties. Although it has received far less attention, Nicaragua is following the script of Venezuela, in which an elected dictator clings to power though repression and at the cost of economic destruction. And as in Venezuela, restoring peace and democracy is a task for which outsiders seem to lack both the will and the tools.

Some 300 people have been killed since April in a country of 6.2m according to human-rights groups, almost all of them unarmed protesters at the hands of paramilitary thugs acting in cahoots with Mr Ortega’s police. Among the latest victims were at least 20 killed on July 8th when the paramilitaries cleared opposition barricades from two small towns south of Managua, the capital.

That conforms to the pattern of this unequal struggle. Students and other young...Continue reading

from Americas https://ift.tt/2uePkDt
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Venezuelan cash is almost worthless, but also scarce

Ferragamo? No, origami

VENEZUELAN hawkers on the border with Colombia call it “money art”. The handbags, purses and hats they sell are made from nearly new Venezuelan banknotes and sold as mementos. Payment is in “real money”, meaning Colombian pesos. The handicrafts cost the equivalent of $5 or so. The raw material—banknotes in denominations of two, five and even 100 bolívares—are still legal tender in Venezuela. But inflation is so high they are worth more folded up into origami objects than as cash. The free-market exchange rate is about 3.5m bolívares to a dollar.

The worthlessness of Venezuela’s currency is the result of inflation, 46,000% a year, which in turn is largely caused by the printing of money to finance the government’s deficit of 30% of GDP. But there is also a shortage of banknotes. In the looking-glass world of Venezuela’s economy, cash itself trades at a premium to its face value, making it slightly less worthless than...Continue reading

from Americas https://ift.tt/2uzLrZx
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The American president lambasts his allies

It could have been worse

DONALD TRUMP’S bark may be worse than his bite, but the bark is a very nasty sound. America’s NATO allies were left with that feeling after a summit in which the American president showed startling rudeness, but in the end raised no objection to a stout pledge of common defence against Russia and other adversaries.

Diplomats had issued careful warnings about the likelihood of robust exchanges at the gathering in Brussels on July 11th-12th, but nobody was quite prepared for the tirade against America’s “delinquent” allies, and Germany in particular, which Mr Trump unleashed on arrival, venting his spleen in front of Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general.

The president accused the Germans of being “controlled by Russia.” He complained that billions of dollars a year were flowing from Berlin to Moscow under a new gas-pipeline deal, while Germany had the nerve to expect American help with warding off Russian threats....Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2ucRYKi
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Thanks to Boris Johnson, a farcical west-Balkan summit in London

 

THERE were moments when a gathering of western Balkan leaders in London on July 9th and 10th seemed like a scene from one of the “Carry On” films, quintessential British comedies of the 1960s and 1970s. For starters, Britain was holding a meeting aimed at helping countries join the European Union, which it is leaving. Then the foreign ministers hung around waiting for Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary—and their host—to show up. They were asked to be patient. He was, apparently, attending an emergency government security meeting in the wake of the death of a woman from a chemical-warfare agent called Novichok. In fact, he was resigning, arguing that the latest Brexit plan would leave Britain as “a colony” of the EU. When the ministers were told the truth, some burst out laughing.

The “Western Balkans Summit” was not an EU meeting but part of a German initiative called the Berlin Process. The London meeting, bringing together various EU leaders plus...Continue reading

from Europe https://ift.tt/2zH1wCv
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Investors are gorging on American assets

ECONOMISTS think prices, like spilt ketchup, are sticky. They move only slowly as firms digest economic conditions. Financial markets are an exception. Computerised trading by thousands of participants means prices, especially of currencies, can move in a McFlurry.

Since The Economist last updated the Big Mac index (BMI), our lighthearted guide to currency valuation, burger prices have remained constant in 19 of 44 countries. But every currency has shifted in value (see chart 1). Our index uses a nugget of economic wisdom called purchasing-power parity: currencies should adjust until goods cost the same everywhere. If, once converted into dollars, Big Mac prices vary, one or other currency looks dear. Big movements in exchange rates, without similarly supersized shifts in burger prices, can send a currency up or down the index.

That explains why the Argentine peso has been the biggest mover since January. Then, it looked 25% undervalued compared with the dollar; today, that has swelled to 51%. The peso tumbled...Continue reading

from Economics https://ift.tt/2L8GT2Z
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Courts slap down the Trump administration’s immigration policies

THE Trump administration’s position on immigration is simply summarised: it would like to have less immigrants, whether legal or illegal. But that aim, shared by both President Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, has collided with pesky obstacles like laws, courts and public outrage. It has also provoked chaos on the southern border. A new “zero-tolerance” policy, announced in May, referred adults caught illegally crossing the border to criminal prosecution and required that accompanying children be separated and held in specialised facilities. That resulted in the spectacle of small, terrified children in cages, shocking the world. On June 20th the administration reversed its policy, instead opting to hold families together in detention. Now two legal losses for the administration make this compromise untenable. 

The first, decided by a federal judge in San Diego on June 26th, criticised the administration’s “reactive governance responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government’s own...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2mbHzdj
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

China frees the widow of a Nobel peace-prize winner

LIU XIA, the widow of China’s most renowned dissident of the 21st century, Liu Xiaobo, had been facing the grim prospect of commemorating the death a year ago of her husband while herself still suffering de facto house arrest in Beijing. But on the morning of July 10th, three days before the anniversary, the authorities allowed Ms Liu to board a Finnair flight to Helsinki for a connection to Berlin, where she has friends. Germany had taken the lead among the many Western countries that had been pressing for her release. China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, happened to be visiting Germany when news broke of Ms Liu’s long-awaited freedom. 

Her confinement began in 2010, days after Ms Liu’s husband, then a year into an 11-year sentence for subversion, won the Nobel peace prize. Though never formally charged with any crime herself, she was prevented by security agents from leaving their apartment in Beijing...Continue reading

from Asia https://ift.tt/2NGN00h
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Deliverance for Thailand’s trapped footballers

RELIEF engulfs Thailand. After 17 days, ten of them without food or medicine, 12 Thai boys and their football coach emerged from the Tham Luang cave on July 10th. The Wild Boars team became trapped 4km into the complex after heavy rains flooded it while they explored together. Hundreds of divers, rescue workers, doctors and officials worked to bring them to safety. Even Elon Musk, a Silicon Valley luminary, turned up to offer his services and a mini submarine (which, while appreciated, the Thai government carefully explained, was not what was needed). The team eventually swam through the flooded tunnels individually or in pairs using scuba gear. Guide ropes and professional divers helped them find their way through the dark waters.

Heroic tales abound. Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL, died after delivering oxygen tanks to the team on July 5th. Thailand’s King announced shortly afterwards that he would receive a sumptuous funeral paid for by the crown. Ekkapol Chantawong, the young...Continue reading

from Asia https://ift.tt/2Je0QE6
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Disney's $71 Billion Bid for Fox Is Now Worth $90 Billion

It’s official: Disney’s $71 billion offer for 21st Century Fox is actually worth more than $90 billion. Both sides of the Atlantic are now watching Comcast.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2NKN4Mm
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

When Will Trade Battles End? Watch Economies, Not Politicians

After a brief May hiatus, a full-fledged Sino-U.S. trade fight looks increasingly likely. The deciding factor might not be what you think.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2Ji1lwG
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Don't Fall for Pepsi's Sugar High

PepsiCo shares had their biggest percentage increase in nearly a decade Tuesday morning on hopes that the company is arresting the decline of its core, domestic beverages business. Investors are celebrating prematurely.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2L6VZJA
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Why the Strong Dollar Is Bad for Banks

It has been all downhill for international bank stocks this year. One reason why this trend will likely continue is the strengthening dollar.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2L9LjqG
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Ethiopia and Eritrea put an end to two decades of conflict

FOR a cold war it could turn surprisingly hot. Countless skirmishes occurred over the course of the nearly two decades following the bloody conflict, between 1998 and 2000, that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than half a million. In 2012 Ethiopia bombed three military camps in Eritrea used by the Ethiopian opposition. In 2015 it bombed an Eritrean mine and weapons depot. As recently as June 2016 Ethiopian and Eritrean troops came to blows, causing many casualties. Afterwards an Ethiopian official boasted his side was capable of waging “full scale war against Eritrea”.

So the arrival of peace on July 8th seemed unimaginable just a few months ago. In a display of unexpected warmth, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s new prime minister, embraced Issaias Afwerki, the ageing Eritrean dictator. In the Eritrean capital, Asmara, which no Ethiopian leader had visited since the war, the two pledged to normalise relations, putting an end to one of Africa’s most bitter conflicts....Continue reading

from Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2L1EMOB
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Brett Kavanaugh is Donald Trump’s new pick for the Supreme Court

ON JULY 9th, in a prime-time ceremony, President Donald Trump announced that he had chosen Brett Kavanaugh to be his new pick for the Supreme Court. As his nominee walked into the East Room of the White House flanked by his wife and two daughters, the president praised his “impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law”. Mr Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court in as many years, has twin degrees from Yale. He clerked for three judges, including Justice Anthony Kennedy, the man he hopes to replace. He worked for Kenneth Starr in the investigation of Bill Clinton. He spent five years as a lawyer in George W. Bush’s administration. And since 2006, he has been a judge on the second-most powerful tribunal in America: the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 

Mr Trump settled on 53-year-old Mr Kavanaugh after a reality-show style build-up in which three less decorated contenders—including Thomas Hardiman, the runner-up when Mr Trump chose Neil...Continue reading

from United States https://ift.tt/2KMN7cX
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Winning the Fox Bidding War Is Just the Beginning

The higher the price goes in the bidding for 21st Century Fox’s assets, the less room there is for error in managing and extracting value from the assets.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2m7rJQZ
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Chinese Auto Sales Run Into a Lending Roadblock

China’s crackdown on shadow banking has caused some high-profile blowups. Now it’s driving the country’s car makers off course.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2ug7fJa
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Twitter's Wings Needed a Clip

Crackdown on fake accounts raises doubts about the company’s recent growth.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2KIzxqV
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Don't Worry About the Earnings Slowdown Yet

Earnings growth probably wasn’t as torrid in the second quarter as in the first, but was still plenty strong.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2N0fAZy
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Sonos Can Play Its Own Tune

Speaker maker’s Amazon partnership helped boost sales, but profits still need to recover.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2J5HCR1
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

A Stock Market Crash With Chinese Characteristics

President Trump has pulled the trigger on tariffs, Chinese stocks are in a bear market and the yuan is selling off. How worried should investors be about the world’s second-largest economy?

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2NCJ00Y
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The Imperfect Science of How Much Tariffs Will Hurt

Economists try to model the effect tariffs have on the economy but actually believe the impact could be much worse.

from WSJ.com: Markets https://ift.tt/2tZKV7u
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The boss of Pakistan’s ruling party is sentenced to ten years in jail

 

EARLY on the morning of July 6th reporters began to assemble their tripods outside Avenfield House, a posh apartment block on London’s Park Lane. The air of wealthy anonymity that hangs around the red-stone building belies its notoriety; in Pakistan, there are few addresses more famous. The assembled hacks were hoping to catch sight of the alleged owner of flats 16, 16a, 17 and 17a: Pakistan’s former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

The four apartments are thought to have been knocked into one, and Mr Sharif is thought to be staying inside it. But it was from his son's nearby office that he gave his response to the verdict that Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an anti-graft court, delivered later in the day, as to whether Mr Sharif and his family paid for the property with money that they had not properly disclosed to the Pakistani authorities. The NAB—pronounced “nab”—found Mr Sharif guilty just 19 days before a general election in which his party...Continue reading

from Asia https://ift.tt/2IXNiMB
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Japan is finally starting to admit more foreign workers

WHEN Sakura no Mori hospital and care home in Kawaguchi, 20km north of Tokyo, hired its first foreign workers six years ago, some of the patients would shout “gaijin” (“foreigner”) to summon them; others were wary of having anything to do with them at all. Today Verlian Oktravina, a 26-year-old Indonesian nurse, says the Japanese she works with are more curious than hostile. Yoko Yamashita, the director of the care home, says patients can see that foreign workers are as good as Japanese ones: “They accept them.” She herself, she admits, was initially sceptical about hiring immigrants, but has since changed her mind.

Acceptance of foreign labour is gradually increasing in Japan, one of the world’s most homogenous countries, where only 2% of residents are foreigners, compared with 16% in France and 4% in South Korea. A poll conducted last year found opinion evenly split about whether Japan should admit more foreign workers, with 42% agreeing and 42% disagreeing....Continue reading

from Asia https://ift.tt/2lXWojC
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Turkmenistan finds a novel solution to mass emigration

Every manat helps

CITIZENS of Turkmenistan are definitely allowed to leave the country, its immigration service insisted in a statement in mid-April. The declaration came in response to reports that men under the age of 30 were being prevented from boarding international flights. But in recent weeks reports have begun emerging again of men as old as 40 not being allowed to travel abroad. The authorities are so desperate to stem emigration, it seems, that they are simply stopping their countrymen from getting on planes.

With the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves and a population of just 5m, Turkmenistan should be prosperous. But its rulers have fallen out with both Iran and Russia, leaving China as their sole customer for gas. Much of the revenue from sales to China goes towards repaying the loans taken out to build the pipeline through which the gas flows. Some of the rest has been squandered on white elephants, such as a vast, empty, falcon-shaped airport and a ritzy...Continue reading

from Asia https://ift.tt/2zesFfJ
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

The Thai cave rescue

TEN days after a flash flood inundated a 10km-deep network of caves in Thailand which 12 boys and their football coach had been exploring, the missing team was found alive by rescue divers. But the 13, who were discovered 2km into the cave, are still unable to leave. The way out remains flooded. The monsoon rains are impeding efforts to pump the water out. Some of the boys do not know how to swim. The water trapping them is murky and fast-moving and the tunnels they must pass through are narrow and winding in places. As The Economist went to press, rescue workers were trying to teach the children the rudiments of swimming and diving, to allow them to be guided out.

from Asia https://ift.tt/2m18iJD
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT