Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, is resigning due to ulcerative colitis. He leaves behind a Japan that is both economically stronger and more socially liberal than the one he inherited. When Shinzo Abe took over Japan’s leadership in late 2012, I was extremely skeptical. After a short and unimpressive tenure in office in the mid-2000s, Abe seemed unlikely to ...

When the employees of Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc read that coronavirus lockdowns and home-working have ignited a technology boom, they could be forgiven for weeping. The company makes the jet engines that power large passenger jets, which is one of the most technically complex engineering tasks known to man. And yet, most of Rolls-Royce’s products are grounded right now because hardly ...

Ordinarily, a new medical treatment is approved only after at least one large-scale, randomised controlled trial shows it to be effective without being harmful. Yet at times — and notably during epidemics — evidence can mount that a treatment is safe and effective before we have that final evidence. We think this is the case with Covid-19 and convalescent plasma. ...