Believe what you want to believe: Japan’s machines are humming, or heading for trouble. There’s support for both points of view. For months, Japan watchers have been waiting for business activity to drop. However, core machine orders, which typically point to future spending, have continued to rise, as have industrial output and capital spending. Machinery orders in April came in ...

Theresa May will be remembered as the prime minister who couldn’t deliver Brexit. But she also leaves her successor another testing legacy: her failure to confront what she has called the UK’s “burning injustices.” Britain is a rich country by any definition, but it scores badly on a range of social measures. Income inequality is higher than in many comparable ...

A report in the New York Times that the US Cyber Command has intensified secret efforts to hack the Russian power grid is less interesting for its content than because of US officials’ apparent cooperation in publicizing the activity. Like any power grid undergoing a digital transformation, the Russian one is quite hackable – but why would the US want ...