Opinion

Over the years, as social media companies gorged themselves on the data of billions of people to fuel vast profits, the information flow never went the other way. Now the tables are turning. One of the most promising pieces of legislation in Congress tackling tech giants’ undue influence, out of reportedly 30 or so bills, would force such firms to ...

  Lithuania is a small country with a big problem. After a series of perceived slights, China has brought its massive economic leverage to bear on the tiny Baltic state. Pressure increased dramatically in recent weeks after Taiwanese officials opened a de facto embassy in the Lithuanian capital using the island’s name. (The many other such offices around the world, ...

Over the past few weeks, Alaska recorded record-high temperatures, scientists released a “report card” showing relentless deterioration of the Arctic’s climate, and researchers warned that an ice shelf in Antarctica could collapse within a few years, dramatically increasing the region’s contribution to rising sea levels. These are signposts on a grim path. They show that damage to the cryosphere, the ...

  As the world is grappling with the latest virus variant, China unveiled a sharpened version of the Made in China 2025 industrial policy blueprint. Previous iterations may have had nations like the US on edge, but this is the one to keep an eye on. State planners released a five-year smart manufacturing development plan in late December that aims ...

Two British retailers emerged as winners this Christmas: Tesco Plc and Marks & Spencer Group Plc. While that’s a far cry from disappointing results of holidays past, both face considerable challenges ahead with concerns about inflation eating into consumer spending power and a slowdown in demand. Tesco’s UK same-store sales in its fiscal third quarter rose 0.2%, slightly below analysts’ ...

  Early in the pandemic, Americans lined up for hours outside of food banks, awaiting their chance to collect groceries. Many of them had experienced food insecurity before Covid-19. Tens of millions of others were new to such assistance. Only thanks to emergency federal intervention was a serious hunger crisis averted in 2020. As Covid drags on, their mission is ...

A chorus of business commentators has declared the “end” of the conglomerate in 2021, pointing to decisions by corporate behemoths such as General Electric and Toshiba to split into smaller, more focused companies. No, that’s not the case. In reality, the real conglomerates — the ones that gave rise to the term in the postwar US — perished many years ...

  President Joe Biden travelled to Georgia to speak on behalf of the Democrats’ voting and democracy agenda, which includes two bills currently on the Senate floor. That follows his January 6 speech, which was also focused on democracy and the importance of voting rights to democracy. Let’s back away from the specific topic here, and talk a bit about ...

TikTok is now the most popular website in the world, by one measure, and as such its influence on how young people see and think about themselves is attracting ever more attention. I am an economist, so I would like to focus on a considerably more narrow subject: what TikTok’s videos say about how young people see and think about ...

  Pugnacious Terry Smith is throwing punches again. The Mauritius-based fund manager has lambasted consumer-goods giant Unilever Plc for its public posturing. It’s not just that autonomous subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s is to stop selling ice-cream in Jewish West Bank settlements and areas of east Jerusalem. “More ludicrous,” Smith says, is the company’s attempt to define the purpose of Hellmann’s ...