Opinion

  In the coming weeks, Colombians will be asked to cast a vote like none other in the country’s history. The sole question on the ballot will be whether Latin America’s third most populous nation should ratify a historic peace agreement to end the longest-running guerrilla insurgency in the Western Hemisphere. It seems like a silly question: After a conflict ...

  One of the economy’s bright spots is the job market — and it may be even brighter than it seems. Not only are there more jobs (1.3 million so far in 2016), but they may be better-paying, according to a new analysis by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Fed economists report that middle-wage workers ...

  There has been a steady drumbeat of negativity about housing ever since the residential real-estate market crashed. While there are some signs of recovery, psychological damage persists. It has been a few years since we last looked at this issue, so we’re overdue for a revisit. Everyone has to live somewhere, and where and in what kind of housing ...

  The Environmental Protection Agency’s intention to limit greenhouse-gas emissions from airplanes may sound like a small thing. U.S. aircraft are responsible for just 3 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and 0.5 percent of total emissions worldwide. In the U.S., coal-fired power plants generate almost seven times as much carbon dioxide as planes. But air travel grows by 5 ...

  Recession and slowdown in growth are set to drive the youth unemployment rate to a 20-year high with 71 million young people out of work. So, we may see a young population equal to an entire Thailand unemployed by the end of this year. The findings of International Labour Organisation (ILO) are unsettling because it is the labour market ...

  Hillary Clinton enjoys about a five-point polling lead over Donald Trump. One way to look at this is that it’s a margin, at this stage of a presidential race, that is rarely reversed. Here’s another way. The Democrats had a successful convention, the Republicans didn’t. Clinton’s campaign has been smooth; Trump’s has careened between disasters. She has reached out ...

  The Republicans won’t stop harping about President Barack Obama’s handling of the Louisiana floods. Their media focus until this week was to talk exclusively about whether he would break into his August vacation and tour the damage. When he got there, of course, it was (for them) too little, too late. What has been noteworthy about this coverage is ...

  Once upon a time, a regular hacker could make decent money in the world of ransomware, malicious software that locks up parts of a victim’s computer and demands payment to restore access. Now those days are gone. I blame globalization. Ransomware has only recently entered the public consciousness, thanks to the high-profile extortion of a Los Angeles hospital and ...

  Australia has a split personality when it comes to China: Government officials stress the importance of their strategic alliance with the U.S., even if it upsets Beijing. But business leaders argue that Australia must accommodate the reality of China’s overwhelming economic power in Asia. It’s an awkward straddle for Australia, as its security and economic interests diverge. “It has ...

Welfare reform may be the last great bipartisan success story. It was enacted in 1996 by a Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich and by Democratic President Bill Clinton in response to decades of public frustration with the U.S. system of aid to the poor. At the time, the law had liberal enemies, some of whom resigned from Clinton’s administration ...