Nobody could expect sophistication from an event titled “Howdy, Modi!” And the Indian prime minister’s rally in Houston — attended by 50,000 or so screaming Indian Americans, two dozen US congressmen and senators, and President Donald Trump — was every bit as cheesy as its title. In his five-plus years in power, Modi has made a habit of addressing stadiums ...

Massive infrastructure projects are almost always delivered late and over budget. The bill for London’s Crossrail project has risen to 17.6 billion pounds ($21.9 billion), while the country’s north-south HS2 rail link may end up costing an unfathomable 88 billion pounds. Even so, there’s a place in budgetary hell reserved for new nuclear power plants, for whom financial commitments and ...

From ATMs to credit cards and PayPal, the West’s dominance of innovation in consumer finance appears to have exhausted itself. At the top of the emergent new order is the fintech duo from China — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Next in line are Alphabet Inc. and Walmart Inc., whose highly localized smartphone payment rivalry is playing ...