Opinion

On March 24, US oil futures settled at around $39 a barrel, up nearly 50 percent on January’s 12-year low of below $27. Meanwhile, the benchmark copper price on the London Metal Exchange closed at $4,945 a ton, up 15 percent from its six-year low in January, while iron ore prices have risen by nearly 30 percent this year to ...

The UAE is on track to usher in a knowledge-based economy. Recently, it adopted the Science, Technology and Innovation’s Higher Policy, which includes 100 national initiatives in the educational, health, energy, transportation, space and water sectors. AED300 billion is being pumped into this ambitious plan. A knowledge-based economy has four requisites: education and training, information infrastructure, economic incentive and institutional ...

Everyone knows that at some point, if we want to contain climate change, we’ll have to stop building polluting power plants. New research suggests that moment may come much sooner than we realize. In some areas, the world is making progress toward reducing harmful emissions. Earlier this year, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy reported that the use of coal-fired ...

President Barack Obama’s surging approval rating is becoming a major plot line of the 2016 election. Obama has reached 53 percent approval from Gallup, a three- year high, and he’s been at or above 50 percent in that survey for four weeks. HuffPollster’s aggregate of all current polls gives Obama an average approval rating of 49.2 percent,compared with 47.3 percent ...

As you’ve no doubt noticed, companies and investors around the world are feeling the pain of China’s economic slowdown. They’re worried about all the layoffs, cuts to surplus capacity and deleveraging to come on the mainland, which will further depress demand. The natural temptation is to blame China for the world’s woes. But outsiders should focus just as much on ...

One of the best pieces of news in years is that China’s finally getting serious about cleaning up its environment. Renewable energy use is growing rapidly while coal use is declining. Air pollution targets are being tightened. Contaminated farmland is finally getting high-level attention. Yet all that good could be undermined if China simply exports its environmental problems elsewhere. A ...

Beneath a photograph of an AR-15 with all the trimmings, an online petition calling for the open carry of firearms at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July (and possibly intended as parody) has acquired more than 40,000 signatures. USA Today reported that the petition is “of unknown origin.” Because extreme gun culture excels at self- parody, it’s dangerous ...

Presidential campaigns incite both hypochondria and euphoria, portraying the present as grimmer than it is and the future as grander than it can be. As an antidote to both, read a rarity, an academic’s thick book (762 pages) widely recognized as relevant to America’s current discontents. Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” argues that an unprecedented and ...

Urbanization is posing huge challenges to city planners across the world and these challenges are going to multiply, if the goal of improving quality of life is given a short shrift. Lack of vision and working with myopia will only aggravate the existing woes that urbanites are facing today. Estimates indicate that 70% of the global population will be urban ...

Edward Cavanough SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS The attacks in Brussels last Tuesday that left 35 dead and hundreds wounded have rightly shocked Australians and stoked global condemnation. But what are the consequences, if any, of this appalling act for the Australian public and government? It is becoming increasingly acknowledged that a similar style attack in Australia is “probable,” according to ...