WorldcrunchLAUSANNE — The question has been debated for many years, but is now gaining more attention than ever: Has sugar become the new tobacco? Are there parallels, in other words, between current attempts to curb the use of addictive industrial glucose and the strict regulations applied to the cigarette industry starting in the late 1990s? […]
Things may be looking up for the South American giant, provided it can weather the unpredictable Dilma Rousseff impeachment process.
-Analysis- PARIS — It’s a company like any other, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. Except that in the BeMyApp offices, you’ll hear a dinosaur screech and a stream of puns. Jokes that fail to get a laugh are taxed. Employees and managers put 20 cents in a jar. It’s the “bad joke tax.” “Me, […]
The result is in: The British have voted 52% to 48% in favor of having the UK split from its continental partners. It’s a momentous decision that has deep economic, political and cultural ramifications. Some will come down the line, and others — like Prime Minister David Cameron’s resignation — are more immediate. Here’s a […]
BEIJING — China has received a string of recent visits from African government and business officials, including Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, in April, and Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, who came in May accompanied by officials from his national petroleum company. The president of the Algerian national oil company also made a trip to China of […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — A system of financial markets is a way to ensure the ready fluidity of all the assets that constitute economic wealth. Implementing the system requires “financial products,” which are meant to adequately represent that wealth, directly or indirectly. Thus, all the wealth that is “fixed” in the production process enters circulation […]
SHANGHAI — After five years of construction, Shanghai Disneyland will be inaugurated on Thursday with much fanfare. And with the arrival of China’s first park from the American entertainment conglomerate, many Chinese players in the theme park business are asking if the proverbial “wolf has really come” this time — dressed as Mickey Mouse. But […]
FRIBOURG — The decision came like a bolt from the blue: In July 2007, the canton of Fribourg’s local government decided to hand over the management of asylum claimants to ORS, a private company from Zurich that was active in Germany. And just like that, the Fribourg Red Cross was out, despite its years of […]
SÃO PAULO — Daniel Okamoto has bad memories of the 2014 World Cup, but not because of Brazil’s historical and humiliating 7-1 defeat to Germany. “My company went virtually bankrupt because of the World Cup,” the businessman says. The firm, Dahouse Events, won a modest bid for a 300,000-real contract ($83,000) to make costumes for […]
KIGALI — About a 20-minute drive from the Rwandan capital of Kigali, there’s a barren road that leads to a construction site amid cornfields and banana trees. A single blue sign from the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation indicates the entrance to the location, which stands at the top of a hill. There, across a […]
With the help of its Russian partner, Novatek, and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), French energy giant Total has created an uprecedented liquid natural gas plant on the frozen Yamal Peninsula, some 370 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Of the various measures emerging to combat global warming, a small Canadian company says its solution to manipulate Carbon Dioxide is both easy to set up, and scalable.
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party always liked to think of itself as a crusader for the poor. Yet in the wake of the party’s 13 years in power, there are still 73,327,179 citizens living below the poverty line in the country — a staggering 36% of the population. Don’t take it from […]
A troubling tale of how the European Commision stalled the regulation of potentially cancer causing chemicals
OCUMARE — It’s midday on this Thursday, and hundreds of people are squeezing inside a supermarket in Ocumare, a poor city about an hour’s drive south of Caracas. Armed police officers are allowing people in, but just a few at a time, infuriating the multitude massed outside since dawn to buy corn flour at a […]
Latin Americans work better with people they know. This dynamic is at the heart of Brazilian samba schools that compete in annual Carnival parades, and may provide solid input for office dynamics and productivity in private companies.
From ancient religions to contemporary ecology, dire warnings that the end of the world is upon us are not only false — they bring a damage of their own.
PARIS — Imagine securing a loan in just minutes — without having to visit a bank, fill out complicated paperwork, sit down with a loan officer. What if it could all be done with a few clicks on a smartphone? For some consumers and small businesses in the United States, China, the Philippines, Mexico and […]
-Analysis- MUNICH — Where is Muammar Gaddafi’s money? Rebels pulled the Libyan dictator from a sewage pipe in his hometown of Sirte on October 20, 2011. He was bleeding from his head, and rebels and bystanders joined in beating him and clubbing his groin with a bayonet. Shortly thereafter, this bird of paradise among African […]
Sergei Magnitsky died on Nov. 16, 2009 in a solitary confinement cell of the infamous Matrosskaya Tishina Prison in Moscow. He was 37. His death rocked U.S.-Russia relations and sanctions were put in place by Washington, followed by countermeasures from Moscow. Magnitsky had been a lawyer and auditor and, while working for the investment company Hermitage Capital, had uncovered an alleged case of fraud amounting to several million U.S. dollars. According to his research, Russian civil servants had, in conjunction with criminals, managed to steal $230 million from the treasury and transfer it abroad through a very complex web of […]
Twenty years ago, Hamdi Ulukaya, a Kurdish shepherd born in Turkey, grew tired of eating nothing but yogurt, so he came down from the mountains to seek his fortune in New York. For 10 years, he lived the hard life of an immigrant, and over time, came to miss the very yogurt he had once […]
You won’t find it on any map of the world nor see it mentioned in any geography book. And yet it certainly exists. In the middle of the North Sea, surrounded by nothing but waves and wind, is the smallest self-proclaimed state in the world. The Principality of Sealand, as its inhabitants call it, is […]
A book published recently by French writer Pascal Bruckner cuts to pieces the taboo of money in French society. For him, it’s one of the barriers French needlessly impose on themselves.
-Analysis- BEIJING — After 30 years of domestic reform and opening up to the world, China is a changed country. Society has progressed, but also diversified, resulting in a true plurality of opinions about various issues. With a wink to earlier liberalizations in China, included Mao Zedong’s aborted call to let “100 schools of thought […]
For the last several years, South Korea’s capital has made the sharing economy a priority, funding a citywide initiative that has enabled dozens of startups to emerge. But they are still struggling to export.
A Latin American consultant argues that excellence is an end unto itself, something that often gets lost in the pursuit of business
Regardless of when or how she exits the political stage, the Brazilian president will leave chaos in her wake.
The former capital of letterbox companies has reinvented itself, minus the tax evasion. Liechtensteiners are discretely delighted by Panama’s troubles.
A French economist specialized in tax havens says only tough new international standards can eliminate the many gray areas that allow the wealthy to pay by their own rules.
There may be only one thing super-rich men fear more than the tax authorities, and it’s a wife gearing up for divorce. Panama has havens for that too.
While most attention has been devoted to the VIPs and politicians cited in the leaked documents of the Panama shell-company firm, most of the people turning to tax havens look much more like you and me.
MUNICH — Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) with the following exchange: Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data? SZ: We’re very interested. JD: There are a couple of conditions. My life is in danger. We will only chat over encrypted files. No meeting, ever. The choice of stories […]
Argentine companies are adding to the international trend to open up workspaces and make them transparent and fun.
Why this time it’s different — and maybe much worse.
SANTIAGO — China has been one of Latin America’s main trade partners in recent years, driving the engine of development in the region with a hungry demand for raw materials to help sustain the Asian giant’s growth. But the recent slowdown of China’s economy has been felt acutely in the economies of several Latin American […]
GENEVA — Imagine a banker getting on a helicopter loaded with bank notes and flying over the whole country, raining money down on the population. This idea came from none other than Milton Friedman. In the late 1960s, as the economy was struggling, the iconic American economist believed that people would jump on the falling […]
With a low birth rate and grappling with how to maintain a work force and economic development, Japanese officials believe they have a solution in AI.
Beyond her late 20s, a woman in Asia faces huge hurdles in finding a husband. It’s especially hard if she is educated and has a career.
Voltaire said he never saw female inventors. A study on female entrepreneurs in 19th-century France reveals a very different reality.
User ratings systems on service apps and websites are making some people obsessive about their online reputations, even as customers. Where is all this headed?