Opinion

  The Cook Report’s Amy Walter points out that whether former President Donald Trump takes another run at the Oval Office or not, the 2024 presidential election will have at least one unusual feature. If President Joe Biden runs for re-election and wins the Democratic nomination, he’ll extend his own record for oldest major-party nominee. If he doesn’t run? Walter ...

Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine has focused Europe’s attention on external threats to its security. A potentially more insidious danger exists within, in Europe’s swelling ranks of Putinist far-right personalities and parties. Even though she lost the French elections, Marine Le Pen demonstrated with her unprecedented vote count the growing potency of one of Putin’s chief allies in Europe. Another ...

East-West relations are a growing problem for HSBC Holdings Plc, the bank with feet planted equally in each hemisphere. U.S.-China tensions have steadily ramped up in recent years. But while geopolitical discord threatens HSBC’s business, splitting the bank into a version of HSBC East and HSBC West — as its largest shareholder, Shenzhen-based Ping An Insurance (Group) Co, has proposed ...

  For many years, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention was known as the world’s preeminent public-health agency. No longer. During the pandemic, the CDC stumbled repeatedly. Accused of incompetence, overreach and muddled messaging, it is now in need of repair. Director Rochelle Walensky was right to order a review of the agency’s operations in early April. ...

  In 2016, Filipino voters picked a president who will be remembered for his crass pronouncements and a brutal war on drugs. On Monday, if polls would be correct, they are poised to elect the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The return of the Marcos clan to the Malacañang Palace may appeal to Filipinos nostalgic for the era ...

The European Union (EU) is working toward a ban on imports of oil from Russia, as well as targeting the country’s wider trade through sanctions on shipping insurance. But it needs to realise that reducing Russia’s oil exports to zero is neither achievable nor desirable. Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia are already threatening the bloc’s unity over a proposal to phase ...

Is industrial demand still too hot for supply chains to handle, or starting to show signs of slowing down? As a volatile earnings season draws to a close, clarity is in shorter supply than semiconductors. Most manufacturers are still growing sales on a headline basis, but almost all that momentum in the first quarter came from price increases. Industrial companies ...

  California and Florida have a lot in common: Large populations, nice weather, beautiful beaches, celebrities, Disney theme parks, hundreds of thousands of acres of citrus orchards. When Covid-19 came to the US in early 2020, the two states reacted similarly, shutting down in-person schooling and indoor dining and urging residents to stay home. Through some combination of that quick ...

  First, it was the financial crisis. Then Brexit and the election of former US President Donald Trump. Next came a trade war and a pandemic. The war in Ukraine is only the latest event to trigger a wave of claims that globalisation is dead. Since the Russian invasion began, everyone from newspaper columnists to Wall Street luminaries such as ...

On the surface, the tiny Ukrainian navy, just 5,000 active-duty sailors and a handful of small coastal boats, appears to be significantly overmatched by Russian maritime forces. The Kremlin’s Black Sea fleet consists of over 40 frontline warships. The Russians seem poised to cut off the Ukrainian economy from access to the sea — essentially re-creating the Anaconda strategy US ...