Opinion

  After his party’s triumph in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most politically important, Prime Minister Narendra Modi now wields greater power than any Indian leader in a generation. He will need it if he wants to continue to reshape India’s economy. True, the results don’t drastically alter the math in the upper house of Parliament in …

  The victory of Dutch Prime Minster Mark Rutte in the parliamentary election against anti-Islam, Eurosceptic Geert Wilders hammered a nail in the coffin of Europe’s misplaced populism. Initial results suggested Rutte’s party won 32 seats, 13 more than Wilders’ party 19 seats. Rutte’s good show and a disappointing defeat of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands election have invigorated traditional …

  China’s National People’s Congress, which concluded on Wednesday, didn’t do much to ease the main worry about the world’s second-biggest economy: its large and growing pile of debt. In fact, to keep GDP growth ticking over at 6.5 percent or more, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged a 12 percent expansion in credit this year. That implies about $2.7 trillion …

  Even Inditex SA can’t defy gravity forever. The Spanish owner of the Zara fashion chain is still delivering the sort of sales growth rivals can only dream about. Same-store sales rose 10 percent in the year through January, the fastest rate in 14 years. By contrast, many competitors are struggling to generate growth on the same basis. But the …

  When a mountain of trash collapsed at the fetid Reppi dump outside of Addis Ababa on Monday, at least 82 people died. It could’ve been worse: Hundreds of people live atop Reppi, Ethiopia’s biggest waste dump, trying to make a living from salvaging what city residents throw away. Despite well-known dangers, and the best efforts of the government, they’ve …

    While Friday’s jobs report was strong, a look through the details of the report shows that the same people who won in President Barack Obama’s America are the ones winning in the early months of President Donald Trump’s. Without policy proposals, currently lacking from the White House or Congress, that specifically target the types of voters who elected …

  One of the inescapable conclusions of the economic crisis that engulfed the world a decade ago was that the culture of banking needed to change. Allowing finance to regulate itself ended in spectacular failure, underwritten by the taxes of the masses who didn’t profit from the culture of risk-taking in those institutions. But the resignation this week of a …

  Brexit was supposed to be about democracy: Those who wanted to leave the European Union argued that their rights were being trampled on by an unrepresentative EU bureaucracy. Now it’s the U.K. government that is paying insufficient attention to the interests of Brits — and it’s their unelected representatives in Parliament who are defending them. The Brexit referendum won …

  US President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban faces scrutiny in courtrooms across the country. Several states and rights group have brought suits against Republican president’s executive order, supposedly a less draconian than the previous order issued on January 27, which met with deluge of opposition and was subsequently blocked by country’s federal courts. The revamped order bans all refugees …

  Having been born into an Irish-American family in what was then a heavily Scots and Irish New Jersey town (Kearny), I somewhat irrationally associate Ireland with the past. But attention is suddenly turning to the future, as the political status of the two Irelands may be up for grabs, mostly because of Brexit. Although this may seem like a …