Opinion

Here’s a contrarian thought: President Trump had the right instinct to insist that China help resolve the nightmare problem of North Korea. A peaceful solution is impossible without help from the other great power in East Asia. As Trump nears the threshold of a military crisis with North Korea, he needs to sustain this early intuition—and not be driven into …

Husam Zomlot does not have an easy job. He is the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s representative in Donald Trump’s Washington. And despite Trump’s early promise to seek the ultimate deal to bring peace to the Holy Land, his administration is focused on more pressing matters. Zomlot’s biggest problem these days is a piece of legislation named for Taylor Force, a former …

Central banks are born to lead. When they start following commercial lenders or asset prices, the message for investors is that the authorities have lost the plot. That’s what is happening with the Reserve Bank of India, which on Wednesday cut its repurchase rate by a quarter percentage point to 6 percent two days after State Bank of India preemptively …

As the Brexit process lurches from one drama to the next, dominating UK politics, media and business decisions, traders have grown immune to noise surrounding the country’s departure from the European Union. The British pound is trading near the highest in a year versus the dollar as attention turns instead to headwinds for the greenback. Sterling has even held its …

The United Nations paid at least $18 million last year to companies with close ties to Bashar al-Assad, some of them run by cronies of the Syrian president who are on US and European Union blacklists. Contracts for telecommunications and security were awarded to regime insiders including Rami Makhlouf, Assad’s cousin. UN staff ran up a $9.5 million bill at …

Noble Group Ltd. received a fresh broadside from Iceberg Research as the trader’s long-time foe predicted that the commodity company will probably fail, while telling executives that the anonymous commentator won’t be silenced by being sued. The trader’s shares fell. “Noble is sinking in a perfect storm,” the researcher said in a report on Thursday. “The company is walking towards …

The best thing to do with mistakes is learn from them. So as part of her vacation reading, UK Prime Minister Theresa May might want to glance at the just-released British Election Study showing what was foremost on voters’ minds as they cast ballots in the 2017 general election: Brexit The election was supposed to be a walk in Hyde …

The short life of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director will be remembered with joy by some, or at least by me. His unbridled self-expression, in the grandest traditions of the First Amendment and the New York street corner, was more like a tornado of fresh air than a mere breath. But the era of the Mooch was also …

It may already be too late for sanctions to halt North Korea’s missile program. That’s the view of analysts who have watched Kim Jong Un accelerate progress on North Korea’s decades-long quest for a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile. Friday’s launch, the second in a matter of weeks, showed it’s just a matter of time before he has a full-fledged ICBM …

The Bank of England to decide whether to raise interest rates. The choice isn’t clear-cut, and the central bank’s policy makers appear to be divided—but with the economy showing signs of slowing and inflation under control, they’d be wise to wait a while longer before tightening. The Bank of England responded to the Brexit referendum by cutting its benchmark rate …