Opinion

  One of the hardest things for a foreigner to understand in U.S. politics, especially its rather extreme 2016 version, is the willingness of voters to support candidates they deemed unacceptable earlier in the campaign. Because the U.S. presidential election narrows to a two-candidate race, the calculus of voters and political operatives shifts in spectacular ways. Plenty of this was ...

  The financial crisis and the bailouts that followed unleashed a wave of populist anger, targeting almost everyone with power, from Wall Street to government officials to “elites” more generally. Except in one sector: technology. Why has tech been spared the torches and pitchforks? Because everybody loves a winner. As the economy began to grow again in 2009, it had ...

  For centuries, a harsh climate and ice-choked seas dashed the dreams of sailors attempting to cross the Canadian Northwest Passage between Asia and Europe. Now, thanks to climate change and reduced ice cover, the trip isn’t nearly so daunting. Last weekend, the Crystal Serenity, a luxury cruise ship, carried a record thousand-plus passengers and crew through the passage. Next ...

America is on the mend. Witness the good news in the latest version of the nation’s “economic report card”: the Census Bureau’s annual estimates of the median household income and the poverty rate. Here are the crucial numbers. In 2015, median household income — the midpoint, with half of households above and half below — rose 5.2 percent to $56,500 ...

  David Cameron’s political career arguably came to an end this week because of the U.K.’s longest-running policy debate. Not over leaving Europe, but over education. When he resigned as prime minister after the Brexit referendum in June, Cameron pledged to keep his parliamentary seat until 2020. On Monday, he decided he’d had enough and many concluded that the timing ...

  After a late-summer surge, the Obama administration has met its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016. The Republican House Freedom Caucus considers that 10,000 too many, preferring to stop resettling Syrians until the administration can “assure no terrorists or individuals with radical sympathies or views will be admitted.” Such fears are largely misplaced. Few, if any, classes ...

  The real estate investors are capitalizing on the rapid growth of the education sector in the MENA region. Earlier, their investments remained limited to the conventional sectors like retail, hotels, offices and residences. But now they are pumping massive capital into building schools and student accommodation. What’s driving them to this sector is its relatively low volatility amid the ...

  Long before artificial intelligence brings about the singularity, algorithms are having an influence over our most important decisions, including which candidate to back in elections. The danger this could go too far is real and we probably need some well-considered regulatory intervention. Earlier this week, the U.S. psychologist Robert Epstein published a harsh article about Google’s alleged manipulation of ...

  One of the most striking ways in which Narendra Modi’s government has changed the policy narrative in India is to make manufacturing central to its ambitions. This is an overdue recognition of the fact that India — whose workforce is overwhelmingly poor and underemployed, and growing at the rate of a million people every month — needs to create ...

  It was always going to be tough for the world’s container shipping lines — accustomed to decade after decade of growth in the volume of video-game consoles, auto parts, furniture, frozen seafood and all manner of other things transported in boxes across the sea — to adjust to a slowdown in global trade. What has made it a whole ...