Opinion

The most shocking thing about Rio Tinto Group’s demolition of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in Australia’s remote Pilbara region is how commonplace it was. The Pilbara is source of about half of the world’s traded iron ore, worth about $65 billion a year. It’s also a crucial area of world heritage, home to the world’s largest collection of art from ...

It’s still possible the November election will go off without a hitch and be settled the way most elections are settled — by simply counting the votes, assigning electors based on statewide majorities and letting the constitutional rules decide who won. But this outcome is looking less likely by the day. It’s an open question what effect a contested election ...

Harley-Davidson Inc is riding out of India. That’s as much of a problem for the American motorcycle icon as for one of the largest two-wheeler markets looking to make its mark globally. Harley said in a regulatory filing that it was discontinuing sales and manufacturing operations in the world’s second most populous country as part of its company-wide restructuring, or ...

Working from home, once jokingly dismissed as “shirking” from home, is back as a pandemic lifeline for economies amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in Europe. Governments in Britain and France, having goaded workers back to the office after lockdown, are now urging them home again. The sound of frustrated bosses gritting their teeth can be heard across the City ...

If India only reforms when under pressure, then now should be a moment for big changes: Gross domestic product contracted nearly 24% in the second quarter, more than any other large economy; tens of millions have lost jobs in the formal and informal sectors; and the country is adding over 85,000 confirmed coronavirus cases each day. There’s an obvious place ...

Plans by China to draw up a blacklist of US technology firms might sound great to hardliners as a retaliatory measure against Washington, but would most likely backfire. Pulling the trigger on such a threat could end up proving that the importance of the world’s most populous country as a global buyer may be smaller than many imagine. Beijing has ...

A round of local elections could have gone very badly for Italy’s government, a makeshift coalition of the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party. Matteo Salvini’s right-wing grouping had hoped to secure a string of victories, including in Tuscany — a left-wing stronghold. A good Salvini performance might even have toppled the coalition. However, the right only ...

After a decade of scandals and multiple bailouts, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is back in the spotlight. This time, the Italian government is shopping around the 1.5 billion-euro ($1.7 billion) lender ahead of a European Union deadline for Rome to exit the bank next year. Loaded with legal risks that dwarf its market value, any investor will ...

When the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in the mid-1990s, the US Senate voted 76-24 to establish it. But it is now facing more opposition than ever, and from both parties. “The World Trade Organization has been not good for the United States,” President Donald Trump said in a mid-September press conference. “It’s been good for everybody else, but ...

Republicans are likely to move ahead and fill the current Supreme Court vacancy to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, even if doing so contradicts the rationalisations they offered in 2016 for squashing President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. On this point, at least, President Donald Trump is honest: “Merrick Garland is ...