Opinion

Japan’s main opposition party agreed to merge with a new group created by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, setting her up as the main challenger to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he dissolved parliament ahead of an October 22 election. The Democratic Party, one of Japan’s top political forces for the past two decades, decided on Thursday to run its candidates ...

When you think of pollution from coal-fired power plants, you may envision dark soot puffing out of tall smokestacks, peppering the air and making it harder for people to breathe. But since technology has eliminated much of this airborne pollution, what’s worse for the environment now is coal ash, a sludge that pours from US power plants at the rate ...

With the release of their new “framework” for tax reform, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have once again succeeded in avoiding an actual plan. At best, it’s the start of a process that might conceivably lead somewhere. The framework has some commendable principles—calling for simpler, lower taxes for businesses and the middle class; a broader tax base with fewer ...

“We have to get massive border security,” President Donald Trump declared 10 days ago. There has to be “100 percent operational control” of America’s border with Mexico, Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, likes to say. This is good stuff for the conservative base, evoking the specter of hordes of lowlife immigrants storming across the border and threatening US security ...

While much of the world’s attention is fixated on North Korea and its nuclear ambitions, something with the potential to be equally globe-rattling is taking place, generally unnoticed, in South Korea. There, new President Moon Jae-in is charting an entirely contrary course in economic policy than much of the rest of the developed world. If successful, the experiment could alter ...

It’s clear after election in Germany that the electoral failures of established socialist parties in Europe are not a few isolated events but a trend, an existential crisis for the center-left. There are few better illustrations of this crisis than Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz’s futile anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel in the aftermath of Sunday’s election. Schulz called her ...

The Trump administration often talks about North Korea policy as if it’s an on-off switch. President Trump thundered that the US will “totally destroy” North Korea to defend itself and its allies. But Defense Secretary James Mattis blandly insisted the next day that it’s “still a diplomatically led effort.” Somewhere in this maze of public statements—including the announcement of new ...

Margaret Thatcher redefined the UK’s relationship to Europe in 1988 in a fierce speech on the continent that chastised her European partners while promising to stick with them. Twenty-nine years later, Prime Minister Theresa May made a similar journey to do the opposite. In a speech Friday in Florence, May addressed continental Europe softly, about separation. When Thatcher went to ...

For generations, the open road has provided good jobs for Americans, whether truckers, novelists or country-music lyricists. Soon it may be crowded with some less sympathetic protagonists: self-driving robots. Trucks with some degree of automation are already plying ore mines and hauling freight. Investment is pouring into the industry. As Congress debates a new law to promote self-driving technology, however, ...

Angela Merkel’s victory in Sunday’s election gives her a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor and should be seen as a remarkable achievement—one that few would have predicted back in 2015, when her popularity slumped during the worst of the refugee crisis. Merkel’s resilience, based on a careful blend of principle and pragmatism, deserves to be celebrated. To be sure, this ...