Opinion

Last weekend, officials in Puerto Rico announced that they’re pulling the plug on a controversial $300 million contract to rebuild the island’s electrical grid after Hurricane Maria. The previous contractor, Whitefish Energy Holdings LLC, a Montana company with just two full-time employees prior to the award, will leave the island within 30 days, while officials try to find an alternative …

Hong Kong has tried just about everything to attract technology companies. It has incubators and accelerators, hubs and clusters, a Cyberport and an InnoCentre. The government has even established a lavish fund to invest in cutting-edge companies. Yet all this has produced nearly no startups of note. Don’t expect its latest idea to fare much better. Hong Kong’s securities regulator …

As a response to the Russian campaign to sow discord in the 2016 presidential election, the so-called Honest Ads Act is wholly inadequate. It is also entirely necessary. The legislation, introduced last week by Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, requires online platforms with at least 50 million monthly users — think Facebook, Google and …

Given that the Indian economy has been reeling from one shock after another, a bit of good news would be welcome. And some has just arrived: The World Bank has declared that, over the course of a single year, India jumped from No. 130 to No. 100 in its “ease of doing business” ranking. The rise wasn’t entirely a surprise. …

Samsung Electronics Co. made two major announcements recently amid its third-quarter earnings release. They need to be understood separately, but analysed together. First, South Korea’s biggest company pledged to double dividend payouts next year and dish out a total of 29 trillion won ($26 billion) in the three years through 2020. Second, the world’s largest maker of displays and memory …

As Google appeals the European Commission’s antitrust ruling that cost the search giant €2.42 billion ($2.82 billion) and pretends to provide a remedy, its biggest competitor in shopping search, Amazon, is offering better service to customers. Google needs to shift gears—and fast—by focusing on improving its product, not the legal confrontation. The European Union has published a summary of Google’s …

President Xi Jinping’s command at this month’s Communist Party gathering was so complete that President Trump likened him to a ‘king.’ But some China analysts are wondering whether Xi has overreached. Xi dominated the stage, literally and figuratively, at the party’s 19th Congress, which ended this week in Beijing. He consolidation of power has nearly erased the collective leadership style …

Financial regulators in the European Union are grappling on several fronts with problems in their banking system. They’ve made some progress, but there’s a pattern: The proposals fall short. Plans for EU-wide deposit insurance have been watered down. The system for resolving failing banks is underfunded. And now controversy has arisen over new rules for dealing with bad loans — …

Having burned through almost 14,000 square miles of western forest, killed dozens of people, and cost federal agencies almost $3 billion, this year’s extensive wildfires have had one positive effect: They’ve gotten Democrats and Republicans in Congress finally to act. Senators from Washington, Oregon and Idaho have introduced legislation that would let timber companies clear brush and harvest trees from …

It is surely a scandal, and not just in the political sense, when the former chairman of a presidential campaign is indicted for work related to a corrupt foreign government. At the same time, it’s important to remember that Paul Manafort’s indictment is not evidence that President Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. …