Opinion

  North Korea, trade and tariff were among many issues on the table at the much heralded summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping. But Xi visit was overshadowed by US missile strikes on Syrian base in the wake of chemical weapons attack by Assad regime that killed more than 80 civilians, including dozens of children. …

  On April 1, real estate prices in rural Xiongxan County, roughly 80 miles south of Beijing, spiked as much as 37 percent; highways jammed as speculators rushed to the obscure district. That morning, the Chinese government had announced that at the direction of President Xi Jinping, 800 miles surrounding Xiongxan would be developed into a city meant to serve …

  Six months ago, technology investors were complaining privately that bankers were lowballing stock prices when companies went public. Fast-forward to today; no one should be griping about overly conservative IPO prices. Late Thursday, business software company Okta Inc. sold 11 million shares in its initial public offering. The IPO values Okta out of the gate at about 13.6 times …

  Victims of tech hype should be a bit wary of Elon Musk’s dismissal of hydrogen fuel cells as “fool cells.” A figure as iconic in the tech industry, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, appears to disagree. Amazon has acquired the right to buy 23 percent of Plug Power, a Latham, New York-based company that went public back in 1999, has …

  America’s Congress is quietly becoming a European-style parliament — and the transformation isn’t for the good. Congress is fanning, not defusing, conflict. Although I have written about this before, the issue is worth revisiting, because its significance is underappreciated and it helps explain the brutal bitterness of today’s politics. Witness the acrimonious debate over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch …

  Amazon is taking over the world. And paradoxically that may hurt Amazon’s ability to take over the world. It’s been clear for a while that Amazon’s ambitions know few bounds. Sure, Amazon is a global shopping mall. But it’s also making its own household products like baby wipes and batteries, becoming a silent giant in advertising, opening its own …

  Representative Devin Nunes’ decision to recuse himself from leading the congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election is as surprising as it is welcome. His erratic behavior, much of which appeared intended to protect President Donald Trump and his top aides from scrutiny, had compromised the integrity of the probe before it even got off the …

  What the drowning of Aylan Kurdi, the refugee toddler whose death drew an outpouring of sympathy around the world, failed to do, harrowing images of beautiful babies gasping for breath surrounded by dead bodies have done. The images brought about Trump’s change of heart on Syria. But it is too late. The protracted Syrian civil war has already killed …

  Economists have long argued that the gross domestic product has many flaws as a measure of well-being and policy success. Yet there’s a good reason it’s still being used: There’s a certain magic to it, despite its science being somewhat iffy. Recently, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein detailing an argument …

  The Norwegian government is resisting calls for its $873 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, to add unlisted infrastructure projects to its portfolio of stocks, bonds and real estate. It should relent, recognizing both the financial and societal benefits from expanding the universe of potential investments available to the fund. Last week, the Conservative-led government rebuffed a second …