Reporting from the front line of a pandemic If you are in the U.S. right now, annoyed at the postponement of a favorite sports event or a long line at the grocery store, hold my cerveza. It’s 7 p.m. on a beautiful March evening in Madrid, and the silence is deafening. We live in the center, where tourists parade up and down the cobblestones to visit the old church up the street. We would lean out the window on a Sunday afternoon and tell the passing tour guides to pipe down and leave us to...

This updated version clarifies the percentage of U.S. food waste versus European food waste. A Danish company that has been on a four-year mission to stamp out food waste in Europe is about to target a country that beats nearly all others when it comes to unloved leftovers. Copenhagen-based Too Good To Go, which connects users of its app with restaurants and shops that sell unsold food for a third of the price, is understood to be ready to expand into the U.S. The startup claims to have saved...

Getty Images A ho-hum week for stocks could end with a pop, thanks to hopes by investors on the trade front. It could be the mere idea of a planned get together between POTUS and China’s top negotiator Friday that’s driving global equities higher, while talk about details of such a deal trickle out. To be sure, there’s plenty standing in the way of an amazing deal. Global equities are moving on hopes surrounding Friday’s meeting between POTUS and China’s top negotiator Vice Premier Lieu and...

Royal Mint Leave it to the Brits to make a national competition out of a new series of 10-pence coins depicting the A to Z(ed) of life in Blighty. But, hey, a distraction is needed given that the “Beast of the East” has been dropping some brutal winter weather on the country, which now also faces a possible heating-gas shortage. To the rescue: the Royal Mint, which on Thursday launched its “Great British Coin Hunt Quintessentially British A to Z,” and it appears to have taken off. The website...

Getty Images The cryptocurrency selloff got a reboot on Monday, as bitcoin pushed below $8,000 on news a major U.K. bank had banned purchases of digital currencies via its credit cards. Bitcoin BTCUSD, -5.25% was most recently trading at $7,951, a drop of 2.9%, leaving it at levels not seen since late November. The spot price briefly fell below $8,000 on Friday, then recharged and rose to as high as $9,471.46 on Saturday, before dropping back again, according to CoinDesk.com. Early Monday,...