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The federal government would give Foxconn tax breaks, subsidized loans and special access through customs and lower tariffs for imported parts if it started assembling Apple products in Brazil, where Foxconn was already producing electronics for Dell, Sony and Hewlett-Packard.

Apple products remain expensive; the latest iPad, for instance, costs about $760 in Brazil, compared with $499 in the United States. But because those devices are made in Brazil and lower tariffs are charged on parts used to assemble them, Foxconn and Apple are pocketing larger shares of the profits, analysts say, offsetting the increased costs of building outside China.

The emerging risks of ticking time bonds By Martin Wolf

In Uzbekistan, the Practice of Forced Labor Lives On During the Cotton Harvest

Amid Rows of Tin Shacks, a Luxury Hotel Rises

Merkel Rejects EU Probe of Germany’s Green Discounts

Ukraine crisis: Gas prices leap on Russia’s Crimea move

“Gazprom’s Nord Stream pipeline has an additional 32bn cubic metres of unused capacity, based on last year’s operating levels, meaning that half of Ukraine’s gas volumes could be substituted into this pipeline,” wrote analysts at Bernstein Research in a report.

June 15, 2015 2:00 pm DownloadQ&A: a third way for Greece in the form of a parallel currency

The Politics of Trade: The Top U.S. Negotiator Answers 10 Questions

The Tacit-Knowledge Economy

Coal seen as option for European energy security

has governments in Europe beginning to voice support for domestic coal as a way to cut European dependence on Russian natural gas. About a 40 percent of the European Union's natural gas comes from Russia, and a fifth of its oil.

Angela Merkel’s Moment of Truth

Harnessing the power of shifting global flows

Germany’s Insistence on Austerity Meets With Revolt in the Eurozone

Ms. Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, are far more likely to stick to balancing Germany’s federal budget, “a very strange objective to announce in current circumstances,” Mr. Fratzscher, who is president of the German Institute of the Economy in Berlin, said in an interview.

While they may agree to increase spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure in Germany, he added, the German leaders are not likely to back similar policies for France and Italy, which in Berlin’s view cannot afford it.

List of International Organization for Standardization standards

Russia shuts four McDonald's restaurants in Moscow

To be sure, Russia has shut only four out of 435 McDonald's outlets across the country and said the move was temporary, pending further checks.

McDonald's in April closed its three restaurants in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Russia annexed a month earlier, citing "the suspension of necessary financial and banking services." Those restaurants remain closed. At the time, a Russian nationalist politician called for all McDonald's outlets to be closed and for demonstrations outside restaurants.

Russia Responds to Western Sanctions With Import Bans of Its Own

Similarly, Russia’s nominal partners in its Eurasian Union project – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – will need to balance carefully between Russia, their nominal “strategic” ally, and the US, which holds the keys to the international political and economic system.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraph

As a result of US pressure, the EU will eventually buy less gas and oil from Russia, and the Russians will buy fewer manufactured goods from their neighbors.

Just last year, China added 102 gigawatts of generating capacity, as much as the entire capacity of France.