Opinion

  When the European energy crisis started in mid-2021, Brussels bet the upheaval would be largely gone by spring. As it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen, it speculated the problems wouldn’t last beyond 2022. That wager looks to be off, too. Away from the daily gyrations of European spot natural gas prices — swinging between worries about a ...

  Russian military action in Ukraine could trigger an energy crisis even more serious than the one already hitting Europe. As has been pointed out, should the West hit Russia with severe new sanctions, President Vladimir Putin could cut off natural gas exports, leaving the continent shivering through midwinter. Yet there is another potential weapon of Russia’s that’s been less ...

Apple Inc, the iconic company whose products have transformed daily life, has done what was once unthinkable: It has become the humdrum. Last week, Apple has reported revenue of $124 billion for the December quarter, beating the $119 billion median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Net profit for the quarter also came in above the consensus. Yet underneath those ...

  At the conclusion of this month’s meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers, the central bank announced that it will “soon be appropriate” to start raising interest rates. This affirmed investors’ expectations of a first quarter-point increase in March followed by two or three more before the end of the year. In addition, the Fed says it will end its ...

  Credit Suisse chose a bad year to cut risk taking. The Swiss bank’s profit warning was headlined with charges for settling old court cases — but revealed a worrying loss of business in its investment bank within. It’s another disruptive squall that the bank’s investors didn’t need. It’s barely a week since its reform-driving chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio was ousted ...

  Mario Draghi remains Italy’s prime minister. The country’s parliamentarians — in a secretive, conclave-like vote — decided against making him president, instead backing a second term for outgoing head of state Sergio Mattarella. While it may be a personal blow for Draghi, who was known to hanker after the role even if he did not openly campaign for the ...

As speculation about war with Ukraine fills the news, it’s hardly surprising that the Russian ruble is once again heading to its weakest level against the US dollar — one last seen in 2020 — having depreciated over 5% this month. Ever tougher sanctions from the West have been threatened repeatedly, which would make already-restricted trade and capital movements even ...

  Authoritarian regimes tend to boast about themselves and denigrate their rivals. President Xi Jinping’s China is no exception. “As the Covid-19 epidemic takes away hundreds of lives every day in the US,” wrote Hu Xijin, the former editor in chief of the Global Times, on January 14, “that country’s propaganda machinery is engaging in vicious smears against China’s dynamic ...

  The fight against global warming is rapidly moving into the courtrooms. In the past few years, in landmark cases in the Netherlands, Germany and France, courts have agreed that state and corporate entities have a duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and demanded they adopt more aggressive policies. A Dutch court, for example, ordered the government to reduce emissions ...

  Facebook and Instagram are reportedly working on ways to let users display non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on their profiles, and on building a marketplace to let users buy and sell these digital art objects and collectibles. No sooner did the Financial Times break that news last week than Twitter launched a first version of its own NFT integration that lets ...