EU closes on migrant deal, breakthrough in cancer fight and the land that no country wants

The EU is close to a breakthrough deal with Ankara that would see all non-Syrian migrants reaching Greek islands returned to Turkey, marking a crucial step in the bloc’s hardening stance against the flow of people into its territories.

After weeks of diplomatic pressure from Berlin and Brussels, Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, privately signalled in negotiations on Thursday that Ankara would accept the systematic returns of non-Syrians and step up action against smugglers. (FT)

In the news:

Diamond: Into Africa

Bob Diamond, the forceful former Barclays chief executive, is approaching investors to back a takeover bid for a swath of the UK bank’s African empire that he helped to construct. (FT)

China poised for subprime-type sale

It looks like subprime derivatives on steroids: China hopes to bundle together billions of dollars’ worth of non-performing loans and eventually sell them to global investors. Such a massive securitisation programme would represent the latest tactic in China’s campaign to lift one of the biggest shadows cast over its slowing economy — a debt pile that is as big as 230 per cent of GDP. (FT)

Regional power games

The US, India and Japan are set to conduct joint naval exercises in the northern waters of the Philippine Sea, an area close to the East and South China Seas where Beijing is locked in an increasingly tense stand-off with Washington. (WSJ)

Breakthrough in cancer fight

British researchers have found a new way to identify immune cells capable of detecting tumours — opening a path to treatments that could trigger the body’s natural defences to wipe out cancer. (FT)

Brazil’s GDP shrinks 3.8%

The 2015 figures put what was one of the world’s fastest-growing large emerging markets on track to suffer its worst recession since official records began. (FT)

Romney lashes out at Trump

Mitt Romney, the former US Republican presidential nominee, delivered a powerful attack on current party frontrunner Donald Trump, calling the businessman a “phoney” and a “fraud”. The sharp words reflect the state of panic in the Republican party sparked by the meteoric rise of Mr Trump and hisanti-establishment rhetoric. (FT)

It's a big day for:

China, which is holding its annual parliamentary session amid a sombre mood that recalls the late 1990s: an era of economic ructions, rising debt, currency jitters and talk of mass lay-offs. (FT)

Food for thought:

Our fraught financial future

The recent episode of global financial market turmoil is likely to be more serious than any period of volatility since 2009, writes Nouriel Roubini. There are now at least seven sources of global risk, as opposed to the single factors — the eurozone crisis, the Federal Reserve “taper tantrum,” a possible Greek exit from the eurozone and a hard economic landing in China — that have fuelled volatility in recent years. (NAR)

The land that no country wants

Bir Tawil is the last truly unclaimed land on earth: a tiny sliver of Africa ruled by no state, inhabited by no permanent residents and governed by no laws. (The Guardian)

Apple must come down from the cloud

In its various quarrels with the US government, the tech group seems to think it is entitled to stand above the processes of democratic society, writes Philip Stephens. And it is not alone. “To listen to Google, Facebook and the rest is to hear corporations that have come to believe their own propaganda: as custodians of the digital future, theirs is a higher calling that should grant them immunity from the meddling of courts or the judgments of elected politicians.” (FT)

So you want to get your money out of China?

Fear not, the FT’s David Keohane has you covered with some very informative charts about “how to turn a small fortune in China into a (slightly) smaller fortune elsewhere”. (FT)

The prospect of pilotless planes

Automated controls already do a lot of the work of flying a plane. Could they someday take off without anyone in the cockpit? (The Atlantic)

London skyline 1616 v 2016

Juxtaposed images sketched 400 years apart show the change in the city’s skyline from the banks of the Thames. (The Guardian)

Video of the day:

Testing Japan’s new wave of robots

A robot hand that always wins at rock-paper-scissors could provide the basis for driverless cars, super fast sports cameras as well as missile defence and battlefield droids. The FT’s Leo Lewis looks at the latest robotic technology under development in Japan. (FT)