Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition 9/18/2017

Americas ● Edith Windsor, who led the legal fight for federal recognition of same-sex marriage, died on Sept. 12 at age 88. Windsor lived much of her life with her eventual wife, Thea Spyer, and went to court to obtain a refund for taxes on Spyer’s estate after she died in 2009. ● Wesley Batista, the CEO of JBS, was arrested on Sept. 13, days after his brother, JBS Chairman Joesley Batista, turned himself in for allegedly violating the terms of a $3.3b anticorruption settlement signed this spring. Attorneys for the Brazilian meatpacking magnates called the arrests “unjust and absurd.” ● U.S. household incomes hit a record high last year, according to new Census Bureau data. At $59,039, median income is 3.2 percent higher than a year earlier, finally topping the inflation-adjusted record set…

To reach gluemaker Delo Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH, you drive an hour from Munich, past villages with onion-domed churches and the cobalt-blue waters of the Ammersee with its views of the Alps, before turning into offices nestled between a cornfield and a grove of beech trees—hardly the kind of place you’d expect to find a global leader in its industry. Yet one of Delo’s adhesives is used in 80 percent of the world’s smart cards, and its customers are spread across Europe, the U.S., and Asia. That success is testament to Germany’s commitment to globalism—now a dirty word in some countries—and helps explain a political puzzle: How, in 2017, can Europe’s biggest economy have a normal, even boring, election while crusading populists have upended the political order elsewhere? “Other countries haven’t had…

In a sharp and welcome rebuke to Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy, a Senate committee voted on Sept. 8 in favor of more diplomacy. Support was unanimous. The U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations approved $51.2 billion for the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other overseas assistance—more than a third greater than the $37.6 billion President Trump had requested. Not only was the administration’s proposal disturbingly incomplete, but it shortchanged humanitarian aid, economic development, multilateral organizations, and cultural exchanges. It would have undercut U.S. leadership and left Americans more vulnerable to threats such as climate change, transnational crime, and the spread of infectious diseases. In recent months, the drawbacks of this so-called hard-power budget have become even more glaringly apparent. From North Korea and Afghanistan to Venezuela…

“It’s funny to say that the company that rips your house to shreds and puts everything on the front lawn did a great job, but they did” Frank Jones’s cell phone chimes: He’s landed another job. If he’s lucky, it could net him a cool million. “We got a monster house,” says Jones, driving through Houston in his Range Rover. His aptly named Cavalry Construction Co. is part of a legion of contractors and other entrepreneurs fanning out across Texas and Florida in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Don’t call him a storm chaser. Jones bristles at the term. Saviors to some, opportunists to others, these businesses clean up, in every sense, after hurricanes, tornadoes, and other catastrophes. Disaster is fueling a growth industry as more frequent and powerful storms…

For decades, the Berlin Marathon has been the place where premier endurance athletes test their limits. With its flat course, temperate late-September weather, and enthusiastic crowds, the German capital has been the site of the last half-dozen men’s world records. This year one of the latest record-breakers will face off against two other top runners to try to set another milestone, possibly even breaching the symbolic two-hour barrier. The possibility of being associated with such a feat has garnered the attention of corporate backers. Nike Inc., which has watched Adidas-shod runners set the past five records, is sponsoring Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist. Running for Adidas AG is countryman Wilson Kipsang, who in 2013 set a world’s fastest time in Berlin (a record broken a year later). Ethiopia’s…

“We were meant to stay,” Ashley Waters (center) says of her family’s decision not to evacuate their Bonita Springs, Fla., home as Hurricane Irma approached on Sept. 10. The family—Waters and her children, Jayden and Julia (pictured), along with her partner, Darby Chew—couldn’t afford to leave, she says. In the midst of the storm, as the power flicked on and off and explosions could be heard outside, a neighbor came in search of shelter. The roof of his house collapsed when a tree from Waters’s backyard fell on it. “I don’t know what would have happened to that man if we’d left,” she says. The next day, the water continued to rise. Waters had expected inches of it, not feet. Like other Florida residents whose homes were damaged, she’s now…