Crisis in Brazil, Apple in the clouds and will the EU and Turkey reach a migration deal?

Brazil was on the brink of a constitutional crisis after a judge blocked President Dilma Rousseff’s appointment of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to her cabinet, prompting clashes in Congress and on the streets.

Mass protests swept the country this week as a court released phone recordings fuelling accusations that Ms Rousseff had appointed Mr Lula da Silva as a minister to protect him from arrest. State prosecutors requested Mr Lula da Silva’s arrest last week over charges of money laundering and fraud, accusing the former president of secretly owning a beachside penthouse at the centre of investigations into corruption at state oil company Petrobras. (FT)

In the news:

US military chief rejects harsh anti-terror rhetoric

The senior US military commander said that extreme techniques such as waterboarding, whose revival has been advocated by Donald Trump, would be illegal and likely to damage the morale of troops. (FT)

Costs of a crisis

The EU’s spending on migration came under fire from its own auditors, who chastised Brussels for failing to plan or monitor its projects properly and for not being able to demonstrate how €1.1bn of funds had been spent. (FT)

Apple in the clouds

Apple has moved some of its iCloud services on to the Google Cloud, part of a broader push to diversify its wide range of internet services and marking one of the most high-profile wins for Alphabet’s rival to Amazon Web Services. (FT)

Struggling to adapt

US colleges want more international students to increase tuition revenue and have been making a big play for those from China, but language and cultural barriers make assimilation a struggle. (WSJ)

US stocks turn a corner

The S&P 500 briefly turned positive for the year on Thursday, in a reversal of the unbridled selling that kicked off 2016. The gains mark a significant rebound for US stocks. (FT)

It's a big day for:

Ankara, after both the EU and Turkey hardened their positions as they negotiated a European migration plan. The development sets the stage for a clash on Friday over the legal, practical and political elements of a big-bang proposal to systematically turn back migrants reaching Greek islands.

Food for thought:

River of life

The City and Canary Wharf house thousands of workers from the worlds of finance, law and professional services. But the stretch of the river Thames that connects London’s two financial districts is a different kind of workplace altogether. (FT)

No fatal doctrine

Fatalism taints the Obama doctrine, writes the FT’s Philip Stephens, but to observe that the US cannot solve every problem should not be to conclude it is powerless. Losing wars has done more damage to US credibility than choosing not to fight them. (FT)

Gone fishing

The controversy surrounding Mozambique’s $850m “tuna bond” acts as acautionary tale of poorer nations getting saddled with debt as the emerging market boom comes to an end. (FT)

Patent pole position

China’s Huawei Technologies held its place as the top international patent filer in 2015, signifying the growing contribution to global intellectual property from east Asia. (NAR)

Death in a cold climate

When one woman was asked to write an obituary for her local paper in a remote Alaskan town, she had no idea that over the following two decades she would go on to write hundreds of them, many for people she knew well. (BBC)

Video of the day:

Society’s lust for gold has shaped history, through wars, discovering and scientific inquiries. But why do investors continue to hold on to such an idle asset when they could put their cash into more modern, productive investments?