US President Donald Trump has never liked the UN. He’s called it a “club for people to get together, talk and have a good time” and said its spending was “out of control.”

Concerns have for long been rising that Britain may crash out of the European Union with a no-deal Brexit as the warring sides have failed to agree on the terms of their divorce. The latest has come from the International Monetary Fund.

Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes a new immigration law will make it easier for foreign workers to find jobs in Germany, but her push to fill a record number of vacancies risks angering voters who still resent her open-door refugee policy.

Game stalled

Bill de Blasio was two weeks into his term as New York mayor when he stood with weeping parents at the street corner where eight-year-old Noshat Nahian was killed while walking to school and pledged to end the city’s “epidemic” of road deaths.

Two months ago, 12 boys and the coach of a Thai football team were rescued after being trapped in a cave in northern Thailand for 18 days.

Researchers have decoded a genetic variant that enables new understanding of why some people are at risk of gout, a painful and debilitating arthritic disease.

The recent exchange between Joe Stiglitz and Larry Summers about “secular stagnation” and its relation to the tepid economic recovery after the 2008-2009 financial crisis is an important one.

A universal basic income (UBI) would be both regressive and prohibitively expensive. Yet the idea continues to attract a motley crew of tech and labour leaders, libertarians, and progressives, who fear a coming age of mass technological unemployment.

Regime assault

This week’s inter-Korean summit will test whether South Korean President Moon Jae-in can pull off his role of mediator and salvage stalled nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington.

Bisphenol A-free plastics or BPA, which are widely considered food-safe, are in the news, on account of a new research that says some of the more than 50 BPA-free substitutes may cause ill effects in mice, particularly in reproductive cells.