Opinion

At the military headquarters where commanders oversee Am- erica’s longest war, an official explains in one sentence the US-led coalition’s bottom-line objective: “Peace is a situation where we can leave, and we don’t have to come back.” But how will United Sta-tes move towards this end-game, as US special envoy ZalmayKhalilzad nears conclusion of his secret peace negotiations with the ...

The US Federal Reserve is poised to put interest rates on a new, downward trajectory in its efforts to support an increasingly fragile economy. The move is long overdue, but it’s crucial that officials and the public recognise the risks. Although Fed officials meet at least eight times a year to deliberate over monetary policy, they change the direction of ...

The star that burns the brightest may also burn out fastest. Investors tempted by the blazing debut of China’s new tech board should bear that in mind. The first 25 companies to start trading on Shanghai’s Star market posted an average gain of 140 percent. The value of shares that changed hands surpassed 48 billion yuan ($7 billion) — about ...

Another directive on immigration from the Trump administration begets another court challenge. In a sweeping rule change, the administration has declared that, with narrow exceptions, any “alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border after failing to apply for protection in a third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful ...

This summer, European vacationers are being brought down to earth. A campaign, marked by hashtags such as #stayontheground and #flightshame, is pressuring travellers to think twice about the carbon impact of their air travel. Even airlines are joining in the public shaming. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is encouraging people to fly less, and Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s CEO recently declared that ...

Having been upstaged again last week by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank will join its US counterpart in global economic spotlight when the Governing Council meets on Thur- sday in Frankfurt and, like Fed, signals further monetary stimulus ahead. But ECB is facing a much more difficult script than the Fed. Lacking a more substantial role, the council’s ...

This week, Spain may finally get a government based on the results of its April parliamentary election. If it doesn’t, there’s likely to be a fourth election in as many years. Spain joins the growing ranks of countries run for extended periods by technocrats rather than politicians, and it appears to be doing fine — like most of the others ...

Now that Christine Lagarde has announ-ced her resignation as managing director of the International Monetary Fu-nd, German chancellor Angela Merkel says Europeans “again” have a “claim” to fill what is arguably the world’s most important economic job. Merkel is invoking a decades-old political deal, which gives Europe the IMF leadership in return for allowing Americans to run the World Bank. ...

China’s bond market has been eerily quiet lately. Over the past year, investors in China’s US dollar bonds had gotten used to the idea of defaults. As early as 2015, the government started allowing some state-owned enterprises to renege on their commitments, a painful but welcome step that helps differentiate healthy firms and troubled ones. But there hadn’t been a ...

Slimming down appears to be paying off for Novartis AG. CEO Vas Narasimhan has refocussed the Swiss pharma giant around drugs by selling off eye-care business Alcon and its remaining consumer-health inte- rests. Second-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street expectations and a big guidance boost showed the benefits of the strategy. Shares hit an all-time high in early trading even ...