Opinion

To Indian eyes, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s big One Belt One Road Belt (OROB) Forum — which attracted 29 heads of government and representatives of 130 countries — looked awfully familiar. It looked, in fact, like an imperial durbar — the sort of grand spectacle that the British in India used to arrange periodically, with princelings from across the subcontinent …

Economists still get a lot of flak for failing to predict the 2007-2009 recession. These criticisms are often misguided. Nonetheless, there’s an important sense in which forecasting models were badly mistaken — and probably remain so today. Critics of forecasting tend to misunderstand its purpose. Forecasters know perfectly well that, in a random world, the one certainty is that their …

A blind spider creeping through America’s judicial thicket might be heading to the Supreme Court, which will have to decide if the contentment or even the survival of the Bone Cave Harvestman spider species, which lives only in two central Texas counties, is any of the federal government’s business. If it is, what isn’t? The US Fish and Wildlife Service …

The United States may have escaped most digital damage from the global ‘ransomware’ virus, though cyber experts fear more attacks. One possible explanation is that the malicious software (‘malware’) harms older versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which most Americans have replaced. Perhaps many users in other countries haven’t. Whatever the explanation, this is not the end of internet threats. …

Britain’s ruling Conservative Party says it plans to establish a sovereign wealth fund. It’s a great idea — albeit one that comes decades too late, with North Sea oil revenue diminishing and the cupboard of U.K. assets available for sale to seed the fund already almost bare. Here’s what the party’s manifesto, released on Thursday ahead of the June 8 …

Investors dumped Brazil’s stocks and currency as the country’s ever-proliferating corruption scandal spread to President Michel Temer. This latest twist in a seemingly endless saga not only threatens to stall vital economic reforms but also comes close to showing that the corruption in Brazil’s government is literally beyond control. Proving otherwise will require drastic measures. Sitting federal lawmakers have put …

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s controversy continues to dog the White House. Flynn scandal has become towering predicament for Trump’s presidency. Trump fired Flynn in February as he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office. In 2015, Flynn received $30,000 to attend Moscow events, where he shared …

It’s been an excellent few months for startups in China’s sharing economy. Perhaps too good. The bike-sharing industry landed its first unicorn, and companies that allow phone users to share battery packs have raised at least $150 million in recent weeks. But at the same time, one startup recently announced that it expects to share at least 500,000 umbrellas in …

What’s Europe’s most profitable airline? Air France-KLM, whose premium passengers sleep in private suites with memory-foam mattresses, dine on Joël Robuchon dishes and have private jets at their disposal? Or Ryanair Plc, which offers flights starting at 10 euros and whose chief executive officer has mused about charging passengers for toilet visits? No prizes for guessing it’s Ryanair. Trailing 12-month …

For years, mobile phone owners have had access to just one digital assistant — Siri on an iPhone, Google Now/Google Assistant on an Android device, Cortana on a Windows one. Now that’s changing as multiple assistants proliferate to multiple phones. It sounds like an epidemic case of multiple personality disorder but it’s actually a step toward a future in which …