Opinion

In a week when Democrats won two US Senate seats in Georgia to gain control of Congress, financial markets affirmed a view already prevalent on Wall Street: that Democrats are the best party to get the economy out of its growth slump. This is a shift from prior decades because of the specific circumstances of the economy in 2021. And ...

In 2020, civil aviation accidents — thanks largely to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic — dropped to zero for the first time. There’s a grim inevitability that the first crash to break that record should happen in Indonesia. The loss of Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 shortly after takeoff from Jakarta is just the latest in a miserable toll of ...

Twitter Inc has done something that was once thought unimaginable. It shut down one of its biggest attractions — Donald Trump’s account — and in doing so also canceled a sitting US president. The ban and public-safety rationale behind it are part of a wave of crackdowns on the public digital spaces where the president’s most radicalised supporters congregate, and ...

Some whirlwind romances you regret for many years. Isolated from its former European partners during Brexit, the UK looked for succor from the US. Two Conservative prime ministers in succession — Theresa May and Boris Johnson — tried to woo the White House in search of a revived Atlanticism and a fat trade deal. Did Johnson go too far in ...

US government bond yields have registered some notable moves in the first few days of 2021. Should they continue on their current pace, they risk causing headaches for both policy makers and stock investors because of their underlying drivers. In less than two weeks, the Treasury yield curve has experienced a significant increase in yields in longer-dated bonds, or what ...

In much of the world, the sight of a mob storming the United States Capitol to keep their leader in office was met not just with horror but with, let’s face it, schadenfreude. Finally! The US, which has for decades lectured other democracies about their imperfections and failures, had an anti-democratic moment of its own. Some in India responded in ...

The British and the French form “un couple infernal.” The two nations coexist in close geographical proximity and are bound together by a long history of affection and aversion. The aversion part is more widely noticed than the mutual respect. A 1980s TV sketch, featuring the comic Rowan Atkinson, showed him wearing a black beret and striped Maillot top and ...

As big tech companies have become more entrenched in our lives, the rise of remote work has made their employees more disposable. So it’s no surprise that the pandemic has catalysed new efforts to unionise tech workers. Last week, a group of Google employees announced the formation of an Alphabet Workers Union in partnership with the Communications Workers of America. ...

Last year was painful for many. Along with those who lost loved ones to Covid-19, perhaps no one felt that pain more than the essential worker, the low-income single parent, the isolated, the marginalised. Often they were the same person. Whether Black and poor in a densely populated city, or White and secluded in a rural area, large numbers of ...

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering issuing himself a pardon, perhaps on his last day in office. Is he really allowed to do that? The best answer is simple: No. Begin with the Constitution’s text, which states that the president “shall have the power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” ...