Opinion

The unveiled budget by the Italian government looks like a “Greatest Hits” album containing all the measures that have failed to spur growth in the past. The populist administration has largely neglected companies and younger workers, who will receive little benefit from the proposed policy changes. Instead, it is letting workers retire early and handing out a still undefined income ...

Two hip, young startups are set to become the latest challenge to Tencent Holdings Ltd. just as China’s dominant social-media company struggles with shrinking margins and slowing growth. Pop and Echo, social apps created by former Tencent executives, have already secured venture-capital funding, The Information reported. Echo is valued at $40 million, while Pop got backing from Bertelsmann Asia Investments, ...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s steps to increase immigration and raise the consumption tax are both signs that Japan’s shrinking population is as much opportunity as challenge. With an unemployment rate of 2.4 percent and a job market that by other measures is the tightest since the 1970s, something has to give. Robots will play a greater role, as will foreign-born ...

Nigeria’s population is growing rapidly. It now stands at 182 million, and is projected to exceed 300 million by midcentury, surpassing the US to become the world’s third-largest country. And thanks to a high fertility rate — more than five children per women, higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa and more than double the global rate — that growth ...

Internet giant Amazon recently ran into a problem that eloquently illustrates the pitfalls of big data: It tried to automate hiring with a machine learning algorithm, but upon testing it realised that it merely perpetuated the tech industry’s bias against women. What’s most troubling isn’t the discovery itself. It’s that most companies using similar algorithms don’t even want to know. ...

Calm down, the world’s biggest car market isn’t going to drive off a cliff. Sales to dealerships in China fell for a third month in September, dropping almost 12 percent from a year earlier, data showed. Retail sales declined 13 percent. Total vehicle sales could now be on track for their first annual drop in more than two decades. Scary ...

Climate change is a menace. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued a report showing how serious the situation is. If warming continues on its current trajectory, the report warns, then by the end of this century average temperatures will be 4 degrees Celsius higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. That may not sound like a ...

These days it seems that virtually every phone call is either spam or a scam — someone is trying to sell you a cheap credit card, Lasik eye surgery or land someplace you can’t find on a map. And you don’t even get the pleasure of real human interaction — the call comes from a robot, who only puts a ...

Bank of America’s investors just got more evidence that taking the slow and steady road is paying off but that there is a trade-off as well. Profit for the nation’s second-biggest lender rose 32 percent in the third quarter to 66 cents a share. That’s 4 cents better than analysts were expecting. Revenue was also slightly higher than analysts’ expectations. ...

This week’s fall in stock prices was about as unsurprising as President Trump’s explanation for the setback — “The Fed has gone crazy,” he said. Expect more of the same over the coming weeks and months, as the US economy adjusts to the withdrawal of the Federal Reserve’s post-crash monetary stimulus, and a reckless administration persists in testing investors’ nerve. ...