Opinion

  Statistically, the odds of being caught up in a terrorist attack in Europe are still vanishingly small. But the Bastille Day killings in Nice, the attack in Ansbach, and the brutal slaying of an elderly French priest in his church near Rouen have punctured any remaining sense that the threat from terrorism is remote or receding. Saturday’s machete attack …

  Marie WOLFROM In Africa, military coups and election violence are becoming rarer but poll rigging and manipulation remain rife, hobbling the continent’s democratic progress, experts say. “We have this paradox where the number of elections is increasing but their quality is decreasing,” said Nic Cheeseman, an associate professor of African studies at Oxford University. “Leaders are becoming more and …

  Can messy, polarized democracies ever get anything done? Could real reformist laws ever be passed by legislatures obsessed with partisan point-scoring? Across the liberal-democratic world, it seems that obstructing legislation by any means necessary is now part of politics as usual. Partisan gamesmanship, increasingly, looks like a genuine threat to the legitimacy of legislatures — and of democracy itself. …

  Pankaj Mishra Political life in the West, it is safe to say, has not witnessed a figure such as Donald Trump for decades. His attacks on the parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan, who died on duty in Iraq in 2004, is the latest jaw-dropping episode from his presidential campaign. But as he lurches toward what one hopes will …

  In the public imagination, no industry better symbolizes the downfall of US manufacturing than steel. Shuttered plants dot the Midwest. Since 1973, steel employment has dropped 76 percent, from 610,700 to 147,300 in 2015. Moreover, the culprit seems clear — trade — and its influence seems pervasive: Manufacturing as a whole lost about 5 million jobs from 2000 to …

  Birds of a feather flock together. It applies to Donald trump and his team of billionaires. The Republican presidential candidate has unveiled an economic team that’s a mirror image of the candidate. The 13-member team includes several billionaire bankers and investment managers. They are all men. And they have been in business with Donald before. Here lies the dichotomy. …

  The global economy desperately needed some good news. That’s what it got in the latest US jobs report. Ahead of today’s release of the US employment report for July, the mood was decidedly gloomy, with economic activity slowing in most other advanced countries, the UK facing a real and present danger of an economic recession and the risk of …

  The UK’s enormous soft power, painstakingly built in the post-imperial era, looks weakened following Brexit. In fact, negotiating acceptable divorce terms or preventing an economic decline may prove much easier than restoring British influence. Some early indications of how Brexit has damaged the UK’s international perception can be found in a recent Ipsos poll conducted in 16 countries. In …

  Someone — the Russian military, say many cyber experts — broke into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, releasing emails and sensitive documents. Sounds bad, and is. But a worse danger looms: the possibility that hackers (whether Russians or others) will manipulate our voting machines, casting doubt on the election’s outcome. Imagine. …

  The success of UAE’s economic diversification plan largely depends on how the non-oil sector performs. While it has been predicted that oil will contribute to merely 36% of the country’s GDP, the expanding economic footprint of tourism and hospitality sector is a happening reality. The UAE is investing heavily in the tourism sector. This capital investment is expected to …