Opinion

  Prime Minister David Cameron should, if the pollsters and bookmakers are right, win his campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union. But if things go wrong between now and the June referendum his biggest challenge will be to persuade the poor, for whom he has done little, that Brexit won’t make them better off. The economic case ...

  Immigrant goes to America, Many hellos in America; Nobody knows in America Puerto Rico’s in America! — “West Side Story” Puerto Rico, an awkward legacy of America’s 1898 testosterone spill, the Spanish-American War, is about to teach two things that few Americans know: If conditions get bad enough there, its residents, who are American citizens, can come here. And ...

  The move of Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to launch the world’s first integrated and comprehensive strategy to use 3D printing technology to develop infrastructure, sets the tone for advanced development in the next decade and beyond. The declaration that 25 per cent of Dubai’s ...

  The Federal Reserve acted as expected on Wednesday: It left interest rates unchanged and used language that was somewhat more hawkish, increasing the probability of a rate increase in June. Specifically: Fed officials highlighted that labor market conditions have improved further, even though “growth in economic activity appears to have slowed.” This is an important distinction — not only ...

  Ikea, the Swedish retailing behemoth, is installing “Solar Shops” in its U.K. superstores to sell solar panels. It’s a defiant move given that the British government has slashed subsidies for homeowners who sell surplus electricity to the national grid. This suggests that the market is picking up where government aid left off; perhaps Britain will achieve its target of ...

  Forecasters are far from bullish, but analysts suggest the worst may be over for emerging markets following a rally in commodities and currencies. In its latest ‘World Economic Outlook’ report, the International Monetary Fund revised down its forecasts for global growth to just 3.2 percent this year and 3.5 percent in 2017, citing only a modest pickup in advanced ...

  Earlier this month, when Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar and U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter agreed in principle to sign a logistics support agreement (LSA) intended to enhance military ties, many in India wondered if the pact would push the country into an unnecessarily tight embrace with the United States. More importantly, they worried that an increasingly assertive China ...

  STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh The military commander of this breakaway Armenian republic predicted in an interview here Monday that a fragile cease-fire could collapse within days. By that night, Azerbaijani shelling had killed two Armenian soldiers in a northern border town, amid accusations by each side that the other had violated the truce. The “frozen conflict” here, stalemated for 22 years, ...

Saudi Arabia’s ambitious strategy to restructure the Kingdom’s economy is seen as an unprecedented departure from oil dependency to diversification. In recent years, Riyadh has relied on oil revenues for about 90% of its budget. The new economic paradigm shift involves diversification, privatisation of massive state assets — including the energy giant Aramco — tax increases and subsidy cuts. Prince ...

  Tim Culpan / David Fickling Companies in both China and the U.S. want to develop driverless cars. Slick videos and flashy powerpoint slides envision a future where humans sit back and relax while their transport pods glide across highways, seamlessly merge into traffic and pull up smoothly at the kerb. Miles Google’s driverless cars have clocked 1.5 million. What ...