Early Headlines: Hong Kong Rejects China Plan, Hungary’s Migration Fence, Greece to Seek Russian Bailout, Walmart Has Tax Haven Billions and More

Early Bird Headlines 18 June 2015

Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.

Global

• Mind the 100-Year Gap in Education (Bloomberg) It will take another 100 years for developing countries to reach the levels of developed nations unless drastic measures are taken.
  
• One in every 122 people is displaced by war, violence and persecution, says UN (The Guardian) UNHCR annual global trends survey finds a record 59.5m people were refugees, internally displaced or seeking asylum by the end of 2014. This number is smaller than the 73 million quoted by us within the last couple of days from another source.
  

U.S.

• Several Dead Inside Charleston Church After Shooting, CNN Says (Bloomberg) A young, white male is sought in connection with a shooting at an historic black church in Charleston, SC. An unidentified official has told CNN that several are dead. The Guardian says 9 are dead and suspect still at large.
  
• The Walmart Web: How the World’s Biggest Corporation Secretly Uses Tax Havens to Dodge Taxes (Americans for Tax Fairness) A groundbreaking report reveals that Walmart has built a vast, undisclosed network of 78 subsidiaries and branches in 15 overseas tax havens, which may be used to minimize foreign taxes where it has retail operations and to avoid U.S. tax on those foreign earnings. These secretive subsidiaries have never been subject to public scrutiny before. They have remained largely invisible, in part because Walmart fails to list them in its annual 10-K filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This article says that Walmart has $76 billion in assets in these tax havens.
  

EU

• Could the EU fall apart completely? (BBC News) Grexit would be horrible for the union. Brexit would be worse.

Greece

• Tsipras to meet Putin over bailout loan as fears of Greek exit from EU mount (The Guardian) Greek prime minister, who has criticized sanctions against Kremlin, will meet Russian leader amid speculation that Greece may leave both eurozone and EU.
• Garcia-Herrero: Here’s Why Greece Won’t Default (Bloomberg) Video.
  

Hungary

• Serbian PM ‘shocked’ at Hungary’s plan for migrant fence (BBC News) Serbia’s prime minister has said he is “shocked” by Hungary’s plan to erect a border fence to keep out migrants. Aleksandar Vucic said the four-metre (13ft) fence was “not the solution” to migrants entering Hungary from Serbia. Hungarian authorities announced the plan on Wednesday, saying the wall would run the length of the 175km (109-mile) border between the countries.

Russia

• Putin’s confrontation with West ‘artificial’: dissident Khodorksovsky (Reuters) Russian President Vladimir Putin’s confrontation with the West is “artificial” and aimed at protecting Russia’s ruling elite and distracting attention from a corrupt system, a former Russian oil tycoon said on Wednesday.
  

China

• Hong Kong Lawmakers Reject China’s Plan for Its Political Future (Bloomberg) The current government system will stay in place in Hong Kong. Pro-democracy lawmakers voted down the China-backed election plan for the city that set off almost three-months of protests last year that captured the world’s attention. Twenty-eight lawmakers voted against the proposal in the legislature, denying Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying the two-thirds majority needed for its passage.

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