Today marks 100 days until Brexit,and the United Kingdom is on the brink of leaving the European Union without a divorce deal. This would be a nightmare scenario for many businesses. The heads of Britain’s five biggest business lobby groups have said some businesses are triggering contingency plans, though hundreds of thousands have yet to start planning. Makers of Scotch whisky, Britain biggest food and drink export, have said it is imperative that lawmakers work quickly to avoid crashing out of the European Union without a deal.
The European Union has agreed to ban throw-away plastics by 2021.Negotiators from the European Parliament and the 28 EU countries agreed a list of 10 single-use plastic products with readily available alternatives that will be banned, including cotton buds, cutlery and straws. Producers of tobacco filters containing plastic will also have to cover the costs for public collection of cigarette stubs.
Commentary: Yemen peace efforts miss a critical factor.Yemen's warring parties made encouraging progress in their latest peace talks. But their efforts overlook a critical strategy - the inclusion of women, write Council on Foreign Relations' senior fellows Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstein. "Research suggests that when women participate in a peace process, the resulting agreement is 64 percent less likely to fail and 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years."
Farmers and headers are gripped in conflict in Nigeria's Middle Belt.The country's growing population and government efforts to diversify the economy away from reliance on oil has caused massive expansion of farming, cutting access to grazing land for nomadic herders. This is fuelling persistent violence as they vie for resources. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, clashes have killed more people in 2018 than the conflict involving Boko Haram.
South Africa issues arrest warrant for Grace Mugabeover an alleged assault. Zimbabwe’s former first lady allegedly assaulted model Gabriella Engels with an electric cable in an upmarket district of Johannesburg last year. Mrs Mugabe was seen as a potential successor to her 94-year-old husband Robert, who ruled Zimbabwe from 1980 until he was ousted in a coup late last year.
The company's shares tumbled more than 14 percent as investor appetite was hurt by a recent service outage and worries over its exposure to Chinese telecoms gear maker Huawei. Such a debut is uncommon in the Japanese IPO market.
Germany’s Office for Information Security has issued warnings to several German firms named by the United States as possible victims of hacking attacks, a newspaper reported, adding that Chinese activity against German firms had increased.
“Six people had been detained by the criminal police on Tuesday and an additional four on Wednesday morning,” the Estonian prosecutor said. Authorities are investigating payments totaling $229 billion made through the Danish bank’s Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.
