Opinion

Facebook Inc. bestrides the Earth. It attracts nearly 1.5 billion users a day, commands a fifth of global online advertising revenue, and has a market capitalisation that exceeds the GDP of many countries. An average user spends nearly an hour a day on its various platforms — about as much time as they spend eating and drinking. Any business of ...

It’s frustrating enough when progress in medicine plods along slowly, but downright alarming when it starts to backslide. Bacterial infections were considered essentially conque-red in the 20th century, and now resistant strains are projected to kill more people than cancer by 2050. While some people dispute the projected death rate, it’s agreed that bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics faster ...

Financial markets were of two minds last week about the impact of mounting trade tensions between China and the US. On the one hand, the escalating tit-for-tat tariffs still affect only a relatively small part of the two countries’ economies. The consensus baseline remains that the measures should not have a significant and lasting downward impact on the economy and ...

The biggest players in pharma and biotech firms are in a rut, and even a heroic earnings season might not be enough to lift it out. The broader environment is positive: The Trump administration’s drug-pricing push is for now more sound than fury, the economy is humming, and new treatments are being approved at a rapid clip. And of course ...

Happy birthday to Amazon. com Inc That is, after all, the occasion it’s marking with the Prime Day hoopla, right? Once again, it appears to be getting a pretty nice gift: heaps of media coverage for a 36-hour sprint of deals and discounts. But birthdays can also be a time for reflection. Amazon has become the default starting point for ...

Here’s the latest sign of who’s benefiting in President Donald Trump’s economy: Without the tax cut, bank earnings growth in the second quarter would have been pretty close to zilch. Instead, the nation’s six biggest banks are set to report a 14 percent improvement in earnings in the April-to-June period. Nine of every 10 dollars of that increase is thanks ...

The two sides in the great Brexit debate finally found something they can agree on: hatred of Prime Minister Theresa May’s European Union divorce-settlement plan. A growing number of the combatants even agree on the solution. That would be a second vote on whether leaving is a good idea. Leavers complain that the approach May laid out last week aligns ...

Democracies look to voters for validation of their economic policies. For Thailand’s military junta, the affirmation is coming from Beijing, bankers and the likes of Harley-Davidson Inc. Harley’s decision to build a new Thai factory to supply Southeast Asia should be reassuring to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha. The former army chief, who ousted a civilian government in a 2014 coup, ...

Headlines like ”Trump tariff barrage pushes China feud to point of no return,” and “China vows retaliation against $200 billion trade threat” are just the latest portents of global investing in peril. Everyone from BlackRock, the largest public money manager, to Harvard University economist Carmen Reinhart seems to be issuing warnings about the perils of investing in emerging-market economies, which ...

The UK’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union represented a moment of vindication and hope for Donald Trump. No wonder he sounded worried, as he arrived in the UK for his visit. It was not the protestors waiting at every stop, or even the giant orange Trump Baby balloon floating over London that was likely to irk the thin-skinned ...