Opinion

The idea of time travel is an old British preoccupation, from H.G. Wells’s 1895 novel to the seemingly immortal television series “Doctor Who,” which first aired in 1963, the year before I was born. Although I didn’t travel by Tardis or encounter any murderous Daleks, returning to my native land last month felt more than usually like a “Doctor Who” ...

  Rather as the US is an outlier among developed countries in equating freedom with gun ownership, Germany is almost unique in defining liberty as the absence of speed limits on the autobahn. That mentality, however, is now slamming into the imperative to save energy, which is in turn part of the West’s common effort to resist the warmongering of ...

  For decades, US companies have been making a significant omission in their financial statements: They’ve failed to recognize and disclose the full cost of climate change. This matters not only for the planet’s future, but also for investors today. It makes some businesses look more profitable than they really are, and it prevents others from realizing the value of ...

It’s a sobering thought that, even after all the central bank wailing and gnashing about inflation, the European Central Bank (ECB) has yet to increase the official deposit rate from the negative 50 basis points it’s been stuck at for almost three years. When policy makers meet later this month, they should follow the example of peers elsewhere by implementing ...

Heinz canning baked beans in Tesco is only the start of the supermarket food fights. But this is one battle that Britain’s biggest retailer can win. US grocery giant Kraft Heinz Food Co has temporarily stopped supplying Tesco Plc with most of its products, including ketchup and baked beans, after the grocer said it would not pass on “unjustifiable price ...

  Since early 2020, the US has been under an official public-health emergency. In July, after 30 months, it is scheduled to end. One unanticipated consequence is that millions of Americans could lose their health insurance. The root of the problem is the extraordinary spending spree Congress embarked on to address the pandemic. As Covid-19 spread and businesses shut, a ...

  India’s attempt to reform military recruitment — which has set off political convulsions that show no signs of abating — once again shows that its aspirations to superpower status are no match for a below-par economy. India’s military — particularly its army — is antiquated in organisation and manpower-heavy. After some ill-advised, populist and expensive tinkering with pensions early ...

  For decades, workers made do with a smaller share of the spoils of capitalism, and the labour unions who represented them shed members and influence. Now employees are finding their collective voice again, and not before time. Tight job markets and the soaring cost of living are fuelling demands for higher pay and better working conditions on both sides ...

The world’s biggest car company, Toyota Motor, reluctantly released an electric vehicle in May. Weeks later, it recalled 2,700 of them because there was a risk in their wheels — the most fundamental component — would fall off. If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase ...

  In 2033, a US spacecraft will return to Earth carrying the second cache of rocks ever collected from the surface of Mars. The first cache? It will have been collected by China two years earlier, in 2031, according to plans released by one of China’s top space scientists. Of course, there’s no guarantee that either mission will succeed. But ...