While US tech giants fall over themselves trying to snap up TikTok’s American business, there’s a large slice of the global short-video service that seems to be forgotten. Ever the deal hound, SoftBank Group Corp’s Masayoshi Son seems to have dug up what could be the smartest move he’ll make this year. Already an investor in TikTok parent ByteDance, SoftBank ...

Finding a vaccine against Covid-19 that works and can be distributed widely enough to help stop the pandemic is a global priority. Given the urgency, governments are doing all they can to fund research and incentivise firms to ramp up trials — pre-ordering doses, lowering regulatory barriers to market and granting manufacturers immunity from costly future injury-related lawsuits. But when ...

Government programs to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will make the federal budget deficit much wider in 2020 than at any point in the last 75 years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s new forecasts, predict that the deficit will be over $3.3 trillion this year, or 16% of annual economic output. Measured as a share of GDP, ...