Your Evening Briefing

(Bloomberg) --

A reworked Nafta could be a good deal for Mexico, and maybe Canada, too. As David Fickling and Anjani Trivedi write for Bloomberg Opinion, there’s no radical shift when you analyze the terms. But Tyler Cowen warns that a lasting change may be damage to America’s relationship with its neighbors. 

Here are today’s top stories

President Donald Trump promisedto raise wages for ordinary U.S. workers. Well, the data is in, and while corporations are swimming in cash, Americans are making less than a year ago.

Those corporations have the Republican tax overhaul to thank for a lot of that green, but there’s another side effect to that legislation: Prices are going up across the board.

The bad news for climate change is that Arctic ice melted at near-record rates this summer. The good news for energy companies is that it’s easier to ship fossil fuels across the top of the world.

Russia and China are joining forces for the biggest military exercise since the Cold War. One expert said it’s in preparation for a potential conflict with the west, given poor U.S. relations.

And then there’s North Korea. Peace was in the air a few months ago in Singapore, but Japan says Pyongyang still poses a grave nuclear threat. South Korea, however, is more sanguine.

Americans are killing themselves at an accelerating pace, one that's faster than previously thought because some drug overdoses aren’t being properly classified as suicides.

Sexually transmitted diseases in the U.S. hit a record in 2017, marking the fourth straight year of sharp increases in syphilis, chlamydia and an increasingly antibiotic resistant gonorrhea.

What’s Joe Weisenthal thinking about?The Bloomberg news director says baseball is a bad analogy for the bull market, and that, as said by this portfolio strategist, potty training is more apt. 

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

• This is what China looks like as a superpower, and it’s a lot different than the U.S.
• While Trump deals with Nafta, his escalating trade war with China is on the back-burner.
• Amid lots of bad news, Trump floats an unfounded claim that Google is biased against him.
• His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, asked Romania’s leader to reverse anti-corruption efforts there.
• U.S. consumer confidence surveys are giving some mixed signals.
• How to build a $4.4 billion real estate empire on the side of a hill in Hong Kong.
• Finally, a reason for rich New Yorkers to go to Long Island that doesn’t involve the Hamptons.

What you’ll want to read tonight

Replacing the traditional system of streets and house numbers might seem absurd, but in many places around the world that lack formal addresses, it could be transformative. An idea developed by a startup in London has been licensed to companies such as Daimler and TomTom. Eight countries or territories deliver mail with it. Even Domino’s drivers are using it to deliver pizza, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

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