Opinion

  The UK is taking on a tough target in challenging Microsoft Corp’s $69 billion acquisition of video-game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. While US and European regulators have yet to opine on the transaction, competition watchdogs are generally becoming more interventionist — especially in the case of tech giants. This deal offers a possible high-profile scalp. Enter the UK Competition ...

So far, economic sanctions on Russia have done nothing to halt Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. The ruble is still strong. Oil prices are high. Before Ukraine’s latest advances on the battlefield, polls showed that 75% of Russians still supported the war (in public at any rate). So why continue with sanctions? Economic boycotts, of course, are one way for ...

The idea of a blockchain is that you want to do bank transfers without a bank. You want people to be able to do transactions, and have them confirmed, and have there be some canonical agreed list of the transactions, but you don’t want to trust some central party to do it. At a high level, the blockchain solution is ...

  Alipay and WeChat Pay’s dominance of China’s retail payments was scripted over the past decade on the back of the humble quick recognition code. The same dotted squares could now start to undermine their moat. Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said at a recent forum on digital finance that it was necessary to ...

  It took scientists 30 years to create the first malaria vaccine, approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2021. A second, even better one is now almost ready to be deployed against the disease. Governments and philanthropies should be stepping up their funding to global health partners so they can build on that momentum in the battle against ...

Even as his troops retreated in disarray in eastern Ukraine last week, Vladimir Putin opened a new front in his war against the West: a “battle for cultural supremacy.” The Russian president declared his top foreign policy goal would be to lead a global counteroffensive against the “imposition of neoliberal views by a number of states.” Russia, he claimed, is ...

The unexpected rise in US inflation is an opportunity to revisit an old debate, which is often a useful exercise. This current bout of inflation has its roots in mistaken assumptions made a decade ago. After the 2008-2009 recession, the recovery in the labor market was notoriously slow. This was commonly blamed on the demand side; monetary and fiscal policy ...

  A hotter-than-expected inflation report pours cold water on the possibility of lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve any time soon, and by extension, the prospect of lower mortgage rates. The standoff is set to continue between buyers balking at high home prices and potential sellers clinging to their homes that were financed at low mortgage rates. Would-be homebuyers ...

  The US transportation system is already starting to feel the effects of a potential rail strike, but any pain will be short-lived no matter how far apart the sides are at a Friday deadline because Congress will not allow supply chains to seize up again. Just after midnight Thursday, rail workers can go on strike or railroad management can ...

My first visit to Kyiv since the Russian invasion in February coincided with a major Ukrainian military success in the east of the country, where Kupyansk and Izyum were liberated and Russian troops routed. However, the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is too smart to celebrate one successful battle when there is a war to be won against a still-formidable ...