Opinion

Very little was expected in India from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, and for good reason: Modi had gone out of his way to cultivate a personal relationship with Barack Obama, including famously pouring out a cup of tea for him and the cameras when Obama visited India. Modi is nothing if not a strong personality, and ...

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. upping its stake in Lazada Group SA looks like a great deal for sellers of the latest 32 percent interest. Parties including Rocket Internet SE and Investment AB Kinnevik are among the winners, managing to wring a 59 percent increase in price since Alibaba took its first 51 percent shareholding in the Southeast Asian e-commerce player ...

Ten years after the introduction of Apple Inc.’s iPhone, and the broader category of smartphones, it’s worth stepping back to see what we have learned. As with most major technological innovations, it’s brought a number of collateral surprises about the rest of our world. First, we’ve learned that, even in this age of bits and bytes, materials innovation still matters. ...

Do we have a worker shortage? Maybe. For months, I’ve planned to write a column on the future of the US labour market. Stacked on my desk are reports on “the gig economy,” “independent workers,” “contingent workers,” “freelancers” and the like. All signify a new, less secure labor market. Workers won’t have long-lasting career jobs, as the old post-World War ...

Executives of risky U.S. oil companies should feel proud. They sold billions of dollars of junk-rated debt earlier this year, locking in historically low borrowing costs and pushing out their maturities. And they did so at the expense of debt investors, who now find themselves getting burned yet again, less than two years after one of the biggest selloffs ever ...

It’s easier for American tourists to travel to North Korea than to Cuba. It’s also more dangerous, as the death this week of college student Otto Warmbier after 17 months of North Korean captivity shows. But never mind the absurdity of President Donald Trump’s reimposition of travel restrictions to a relatively open and safe island 90 miles off the American ...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has now formally enlisted in the fight against IS extremists. It can begin by helping to stem the flow of refugees trying to reach Europe from North Africa. This would be more than a humanitarian exercise; it would be a counterterrorism operation. Wherever refugees gather in hopelessness, violent extremists have a fertile recruiting ground. ...

In environmentalist circles, there’s a common trope that for humanity to prevent catastrophic climate change, economic growth must stop. This idea has helped to turn what should be a hard-headed, rational debate into a partisan political one — many on the right suspect that climate-change activism is a thin veneer for a socialist plot to throttle the economies of the ...

The Italian government looks set to put Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, two troubled regional lenders, into liquidation, selling off the good assets to a rival bank for a symbolic price. The toxic assets would be transferred to a bad bank, mostly funded by the government. Shareholders and junior bond-holders would contribute to the rescue, while senior creditors ...

Apple Inc. has long proved adept at negotiating China’s notoriously challenging market, responding to fickle consumer tastes and unpredictable regulation far more adeptly than its competitors. But a recent decision to start taking a 30 percent commission on “tips” paid to artists and entertainers online threatens to undermine that savvy reputation — and quite possibly Apple’s long-term prospects in China. ...