Opinion

  Quantum mechanics, Carl Sagan once observed, is so strange that “common sense is almost useless in approaching it.” Scientists still don’t understand exactly why matter behaves as it does at the quantum level. Yet they’re getting better at exploiting its peculiar dynamics — in ways that may soon upend the technology business. One of the most interesting applications is …

  Brexit pressure is mounting on Theresa May and the British Prime Minister will have to cross the molehills before she hits the mountain ahead. While Japan has warned that its companies might walk out if they don’t get access to the single market in the UK, the US has shown its reluctance to enter into a trade deal with …

  India’s just-released GDP figures show it’s still the world’s fastest-growing large economy. Over the past decade or so, those numbers have swooped and stuttered —from the boom years of the mid-2000s, when easy money and roaring demand pushed growth up to nearly double digits, to the hard stop at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, to the dramatic, …

  Just about the only thing dumber than judicial elections is trying to regulate what judges can say when they’re running for office. Last year, the Supreme Court struggled with this problem in a case about judicial fundraising. Now an appeals court has struck down elements of Kentucky’s nonpartisan judicial election rules that try to regulate how judges can talk …

  Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be more open than ever to a compromise with Japan that would end the two countries’ post-World War II territorial dispute. Both sides have been making tentative moves toward reconciliation since May, and a deal may finally be in the works after decades of false starts. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Putin …

  Because truth in labelling laws are among the laws from which Washington feels exempt, the titles of congressional legislation often take liberties with the facts (e.g., the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). The Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act, however, precisely names the ailment for which it is the remedy. The Justice Department has negotiated “bank settlement agreements” whereby …

There is some good news in bank land. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. just released its quarterly banking profile update (executive summary), and it is filled with signs of improvements in the state of the industry. Just some highlights: Net operating revenue is rising, as is loan growth and revenue. Quarterly net income was the highest since the financial crisis …

  After more than a week of conflicting accounts of Donald Trump’s views on immigration, a period of confusion marked by words such as “softening,” Trump made his intentions clear last Wednesday. The line is as hard as ever, even if the policy is all over the place. In the afternoon, Trump had a strange, subdued meeting with Mexican President …

  The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will benefit the most from the new bankruptcy law whose final draft was approved by the UAE cabinet on Sunday. It will help them ease their functioning while bolstering them to shore up investment. Earlier, the SMEs — as well as other companies and businesses — who failed to pay back their debts …

  The Clintons have been subject to fishing expeditions before, but why is a federal court making Hillary Clinton give sworn responses now to questions about her use of a private e-mail server back when she was secretary of state? This all stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a conservative group seeking State Department information about …