Opinion

TUI AG, the world’s biggest package-holiday company, has just secured enough government funding to see it through the lean Covid-affected winter season. A glance at its latest quarterly earnings shows this is probably just as well. The German company reported a 1.1 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) operating loss in the quarter ending on June 30, after revenue slumped 98%. It said ...

The Chinese used to be an adventurous bunch. Last year, 170 million of them travelled internationally, threatening to tip the nation into a current account deficit. Now, scarred by anti-Chinese sentiment abroad amid the pandemic, and suspicious of many things foreign, consumers are turning inward. Consider a CLSA Ltd survey of 1,600 shoppers, conducted between June 30 and July 7. ...

It looks as if the long-awaited Apple Inc subscription bundles are finally going to happen. But while it is a solid step in the right direction, the smartphone giant needs to do far more to change the game. Bloomberg News reported that Apple is preparing to launch several bundles, internally named “Apple One,” as soon as October. There will be ...

For very different reasons, both Indians and US conservatives are emphasizing Senator Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage. This shouldn’t be entirely surprising. Indians have always been quick to appropriate successful members of their diaspora. And right-wing commentators and even US President Donald Trump are seeking to spread suspicions about the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s citizenship by emphasizing her mother’s Indian background ...

Who should be at the front of the line if an effective Covid-19 vaccine emerges from testing? The answer depends on what we learn from the kind of field trials Russia is skipping. Some vaccines might not be that good at preventing infection, but would prevent severe cases. Those should be given to those most likely to die from the ...

King dollar still reigns supreme. And that means there are two ways for banks to go: the US way, or the highway. Hong Kong and Chinese officials scoffed when the Trump administration imposed sanctions last weekend on 11 individuals deemed to have played a role in undermining the city’s autonomy. Luo Huining, director of the central government’s Liaison Office, noted ...

The intense debates over school openings are missing something crucial: numbers. Without them, it’s essentially impossible to know what to do, or to evaluate what is being proposed. Here’s an analogy. Suppose that the Food and Drug Administration is contemplating a new food safety regulation, or that the Department of Transportation is considering new restrictions on railroads. The White House ...

Among that sad subset of people whose hobby over the last few months has been speculating about Joe Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California was always in the lead. There’s a reason for that: She checks all the boxes. Biden said he was going to choose a woman. The next logical question, once he made that declaration, was ...

The question of herd immunity — specifically, whether some cities and regions are acquiring it sooner than expected and thus have higher than expected protection against Covid-19 — has been attracting more attention lately. Even if this hypothesis is true, however, it still leaves the world with some truly significant challenges and mandates a continuing vigorous fight against the pandemic. ...

France’s experience of Covid-19 has been one of logistical public-service highs and infantilising, bureaucratic lows. Its springtime lockdown, one of the strictest in Europe, saved lives and protected overloaded hospitals but also punished people for leaving home without the right authorisation form or jogging at the wrong hour. The government fretted about panic-buying so much that even purchases of nicotine ...