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The North Korea crisis isn't bringing world powers closer together. A day after U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley called for the strongest possible sanctions, Russia joined China in casting doubt on their effectiveness. Sanctions, President Vladimir Putin said, are “useless and ineffective.” He called for more security guarantees to help talk North Korea back from the brink. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted about ramping up military sales to Japan and South Korea. North Korea could be planning a missile launch within days, according to reports. — Adam Blenford
Too many pieces. Lego plans to cut 1,400 jobs as weak demand for a new line of “Batman” play sets contributed to its worst downturn in more than a decade. The cuts represent 8 percent of the Danish toymaker's workforce. “We're losing momentum and we're losing productivity,” said chairman Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who worries the company has become too bureaucratic. Children are spending more time on digital alternatives.
Coalition model. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will likely have to assemble a coalition government after Germany's Sept. 24 federal elections. One model for how that could work: a three-party coalition in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein that has united Merkel's Christian Democrats with traditionally incompatible Free Democrats and Greens.
“They want to regulate everything.” The Czech Republic has prospered during its 13 years in the European Union. Now the richest country in formerly communist Eastern Europe is heading to the polls, but bureaucrats in Brussels aren't getting any credit. No country in Europe is more euroskeptic, according to recent Eurobarometer surveys—not even the Brexit-riven British. The leading candidate is Andrej Babis, a Slovak-born billionaire who paints political insiders as corrupt and incompetent and yet has a raft of potential conflicts of interest.
Diesel's demise? The CEO of Japan's Horiba—the company whose automotive testing equipment helped expose Volkswagen's emissions-cheating scandal—says electric cars will never make up more than a third of the world's automobiles for practical reasons. “Any academic who says 100 percent of cars will be electric in the future has been reading too many comic books,” Atsushi Horiba said.
Home, James. Speaking of comic books, a Munich-based startup called Lilium is developing jet-powered flying taxis that could transport up to five passengers from New York's JFK airport to downtown Manhattan in five minutes. To build its first prototype, Lilium is raising $100 million from funders including Tencent, Atomico and Obvious Ventures, the investment vehicle of Twittter co-founder Ev Williams.
Valentine's bonanza. Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut, the world's largest cocoa processor, has come up with the first new natural color for chocolate since Nestle started making bars of white chocolate more than 80 years ago. Made from a special kind of cocoa bean, the chocolate has a pinkish hue and fruity flavor and has been in development for a decade. It could be a big seller in China, where the color red is associated with luck and happiness.
Compiled by Andy Reinhardt and Adam Blenford
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andy Reinhardt at areinhardt2@bloomberg.net, Adam Blenford Lisa Fleisher
With assistance from Editorial Board
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