Opinion

If Kenya goes ahead with its presidential vote this week, it will be making a historic mistake — one that threatens unrest and undermines a landmark court decision affirming the importance of transparent, free and fair elections. Thursday’s scheduled vote is a redo of one held on August 8, which Kenya’s Supreme Court annulled on September 1. In making its …

From 2008 to 2014, according to the US Department of Justice, background checks prevented 556,496 gun purchases. In the last six months, about that many people have been removed from the national database and are newly eligible to buy a gun. The FBI’s national instant criminal background check system, which screens such transactions, is not quite perfect: It has an …

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, has guided his country’s monetary policy for most of the 21st century. He was appointed in 2002, shortly after China joined the World Trade Organization, and helped steer its economy through the global financial crisis. In the process, he gained widespread respect at home and a reputation for prudent liberalism abroad. …

The past decade has been a testing time for the Russian tycoon’s love affair with London. The worst relations with the West since the Cold War, economic sanctions on Russia’s biggest companies and an oil-price rout that sank the rouble to record depths forced Russian companies and investors to migrate elsewhere. An index of London-listed Russian stocks has fallen 42 …

While consumers remember the iPhone for its cool design, closed-wall operating system and hefty price tag, industry insiders in Asia turn to the US giant as an example of incredible manufacturing discipline. First under Tim Cook, and now Jeff Williams, the current chief operating officer, Apple has shone as a beacon of how to discover and develop unique materials, coerce …

Kevin Hassett evidently has not received the memo that economics is ‘the dismal science.’ The ebullient chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers is relishing the intellectual feast of applying to policymaking the predictive tools of a science that was blindsided by the Great Recession. Economists, like other scientists, learn things even when — actually, especially when — they …

Poor Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. China’s third-most-indebted developer, already burdened by its acquisition of Dalian Wanda Group Co.’s hotel portfolio, has once again had to push back its A-share listing, just as more evidence emerges the government’s real-estate-cooling measures are starting to bite. R&F said on Sunday its planned float of shares in China, mooted as far back as May …

High stock prices. It’s a chief reason voters gave for coming out again in favor of Shinzo Abe, who cinched another term as Japan’s prime minister on Sunday. Watching Japan’s stock market tick up to its highest level in two decades is a bit like watching the ‘likes’ accumulate from your so-called friends on a popular Facebook post. Affirmation tends …

By nearly any measure, Facebook Inc. is an extraordinary success. Its market capitalization exceeds $500 billion. Its user base outnumbers all but one continent. Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive officer, is one of the world’s wealthiest people. No one should begrudge Facebook (or Zuckerberg) this success. Yet as it begins to play a more central role in American media and …

For most Indians, the festival of Diwali is well worth the wait. Houses are brightly lit, boxes of sweets are exchanged—and accounts for the year are closed. The Hindu festival of lights also heralds the beginning of winter, the few months when the baked northern plains of the subcontinent become marginally more liveable. Except in India’s giant capital. Here in …