Opinion

Social-media companies insist they’re making progress in fighting the manipulation of their platforms. But two researchers, working on an extremely modest budget, have just shown that their defenses are routinely bypassed by an entire manipulation industry, largely based in Russia. In a report for Nato’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, Sebastian Bay and Rolf Fredheim described an experiment they ran ...

For all the good intentions of the governments gathered in Madrid, a humbling reality hangs over the latest climate change conference. The effectiveness of what is agreed and done will ultimately stand or fall on the actions of just one country: China. It was the rise of China and to a lesser extent India, with their associated energy demands, that ...

The oil industry knows the dirty business of extracting fossil fuels is likely to gush cash for the foreseeable future. But it also knows it needs to be a central part of the solution to the climate crisis. Trying to keep both ideas in mind, Repsol SA made an eye-catching commitment: to become carbon neutral by 2050. Unfortunately, achieving that ...

What to make of the alarming data on assaults, murders and other unsafe incidents reported by Uber Technologies Inc.? More than 3,000 assault allegations were made in 2018 by Uber drivers and passengers in the US, the company said in a first-of-its-kind safety report. We can’t know from the data if Uber is statistically safer than other forms of transportation, ...

You’ll build and they’ll come? Well, don’t bet on it. That’s what Singapore’s authorities seem to be telling property developers, who are flooding the market with new homes. The builders themselves are getting nervous about the glut. But everyone — the prospective homeowner, the seller and the government — is actually lucky. A minor bubble got pricked in time, with ...

It’s impressive how well the US economy has held up during the past year. As early as 2018, leading indicators were suggesting a heightened risk of recession in 2019 or 2020. Then early this year the yield curve inverted, a traditional signal that recession is imminent (the inversion has since reversed, but this typically happens before growth actually goes negative). ...

More than three years after the Brexit referendum left investors with $23 billion trapped in seven UK real estate funds, holders of another property portfolio have discovered that when their right to daily redemptions meets the reality of hard-to-sell assets, their money can become a hostage to illiquidity. M&G Plc last week said it’s freezing a 2.5 billion-pound ($3.3 billion) ...

With India’s nominal GDP growing at its slowest pace in 17 years, it’s a given that the central bank will cut interest rates again. What’s the point, though? Commercial bank lending rates have turned immune to monetary policy, so much so that a sixth reduction this year in the benchmark price of money will make hardly any difference. The only ...

As Iran guns down protesters at home, it’s also waging a global campaign of suppression against dissidents in the United States and other countries. Iran’s attacks on critics abroad have been brazen. In recent months, anti-regime activists have been kidnapped, murdered and harassed, according to news reports and interviews with activists. The FBI and security agencies in Europe are monitoring ...

This time a year ago, the federal funds target rate was 2.25% and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was intent on raising it to 3% while continuing to shrink the size of the central bank’s balance sheet. The massive disruption in the credit markets that followed not only thwarted his aims and catalszed the “Powell Pivot,” but continues to dictate ...