Opinion

Boeing Co is one step closer to relegating the 737 Max crisis to the history books. The aerospace giant entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department under which the company will pay $2.5 billion to resolve a criminal charge that it conspired to defraud the US by deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration about certain characteristics of its ...

The night is darkest just before dawn, they say. Dark it certainly is right now. The more contagious variants of Sars-CoV-2 coming out of the UK and South Africa will make the pandemic worse before mass vaccination can make it better. But take another look at some of these new vaccines. And then contemplate the dawn to come — not ...

The arrests of more than 50 pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong mark Beijing’s most sweeping attempt yet to redefine the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement that governed the former British colony’s return to China 23 years ago. They are a challenge to both the incoming US administration of President-elect Joe Biden and the European Union, which concluded an ill-timed investment ...

There’s more at stake in Tokyo’s prospective emergency measures to contain the coronavirus than the fate of the metropolis’s great restaurants. Bullish scenarios for a muscular global economic rebound may have to be reassessed. The International Monetary Fund has penciled in world growth of 5.2%, and a 6.9% boost for Asia. Morgan Stanley predicted a global gain of 6.4%. But ...

European countries have long prided themselves on their strong welfare states, including public-health systems. They are also convinced that the state has a big role to play in fostering the recovery after the pandemic. The painfully slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccines across the European Union is undermining any claims that government knows best, whether at a national or supranational level. ...

A red-hot trend in the car industry is for new entrants such as Fisker Inc to hand over the complicated and capital-intensive work of engineering and building vehicles to a contract manufacturer. Increasingly, cars are judged on their software and electronics so why bother wasting time and money on metal bashing? If Apple Inc is indeed seriously considering launching its ...

In the biggest British retail deal of 2020, billionaire entrepreneurs Mohsin and Zuber Issa and private equity firm TDR Capital were the surprise winners of a majority stake in UK supermarket Asda, valuing it at 6.8 billion pounds ($9.3 billion). That augurs well for more supermarket mergers and acquisitions this year. Several other private equity groups considered taking control of ...

Like the little boy haunted by ghosts in the horror movie “The Sixth Sense,” President Donald Trump sees dead people everywhere. He thinks at least 5,000 of them voted in Georgia during the presidential election and were part of a broader conspiracy that deprived him of a victory in the state. In an unhinged, extraordinary phone call with Georgia Secretary ...

An $18 billion merger between Indonesia’s transportation king Gojek and e-commerce giant PT Tokopedia would create the kind of champion Southeast Asia’s largest nation deserves. The real synergies may be hidden below the surface, just like the landmines they face. Both are ready for a possible deal, with a view towards an initial public offering, Bloomberg News wrote on Tuesday. ...

South Korea greeted the new year by recording its first annual population decline. Unfortunately, the go-to solutions are meeting some practical challenges in the Covid-19 era. Headcount dwindled slightly to 51.8 million last year, the Ministry of Interior and Safety said. The retreat was the product of a 10.6% slide in births, coupled with a 3.1% increase in deaths. South ...