US joins climate coalition, China working age population to fall 10% and why retiring is good for you

This article is published in collaboration with FirstFT.

The US has unexpectedly joined a large group of countries — dubbed the “high ambition coalition” — trying to isolate China and India in the tense home stretch of UN talks in Paris on a new global climate agreement.

“This is our moment and we need to make it count,” said Todd Stern, the US climate envoy, as he joined ministers from the EU, Latin America, Africa and Pacific islands at a news conference to demand that the new accord contain measures that China, India, Saudi Arabia and other nations are trying to resist. (FT)

In the news

Osborne rejects Trump ban UK chancellor George Osborne has rejected a growing public clamour for the government to ban Donald Trump from Britain, saying the democratic debate was the best way to counter his “nonsense” views. More than 265,000 people signed a petition in just 24 hours calling for the Republican frontrunner to be refused entry. (FT)

China working age population to fall 10% That’s according to the World Bank, which warned on Wednesday that the world’s most populous country risked “ getting old before getting rich”. (FT)

Marissa Mayer vows to stay The Yahoo chief executive said she would remain at the helm of the tech company as it attempts to bundle its core assets into a new listed company, after the board abandoned plans to spin off its $32bn stake in Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba. (FT)

Ratings blow for Brazil The country’s woes deepened on Wednesday as Moody’s Investors Service downgraded all ratings for embattled oil group Petrobras, and the country faced the threat of losing its investment grade credit rating from the agency. (FT)

US takes aim at Yakuza funds Washington has frozen the assets of a former top Japanese mafia boss, as it steps up efforts to clamp down on criminal activities around the world by the Yakuza and related groups. The action against Tadamasa Goto, a former top boss in the powerful Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, makes him the 14th person to be targeted since President Barack Obama named the Yakuza as a significant transnational criminal organisation in 2011. (FT)

It’s a big day for

Volkswagen The company’s chief executive and chairman will appear before investors and the media for the first time since the emissions cheating scandal broke in September. (FT)

Food for thought

The perils of punctuation You’re probably just following the rules of English grammar, but in the eyes of the reader that full stop at the end of your text message makes you seem insincere. That is according to a new scientific study, anyway. The upshot: exclamation marksare perceived as heartfelt! (The Guardian)

The middle class meltdown America’s middle class has shrunk to just half the population for the first time in at least four decades as the forces of technological change and globalisationdrive a wedge between the winners and losers in a splintering US society. (FT)

Martin Shkreli: public enemy The pharma executive who has been dubbed “the most hated man in America” can add another sobriquet: rap fans’ No. 1 troll. It has emerged that Mr Shkreli paid $2m for the only copy in existence of Wu-Tang Clan’s album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin . He made the announcement with his trademark humility and grace. (Bloomberg)

The City of London’s last gin distillery London dry gin is manufactured all over the world in accordance with regulations laid down by authorities in the Square Mile some 300 years ago. Yet, the City today only has one distillery left and to watch the drink being made evokes a sense of time-honoured pilgrimage. (BBC)

Why retiring is good for you For many years, the accepted view was that retirement is not a good idea: work gave you a purpose and stopping led to a quick decline. But more comprehensive studies throw doubt on these assumptions. “Retirement is actually good for you,” writes Michael Skapinker. (FT)

Video of the day

Bitcoin: the Satoshi Nakamoto riddle FT Alphaville’s Izabella Kaminska explains what bitcoin is, how it came about and what might happen if the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, its pseudonymous inventor, was revealed. (FT)

Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: FirstFT is the Financial Times’ editors curated free daily email of the top global stories from the FT and the best of the rest of the web.

Image: Chinese cyclists ride past three elderly men from neigbourhood watch committees in central Beijing. REUTERS/Guang Niu.