Covid-19’s path of destruction has not exempted the pieties about it. People who said it was “just the flu” don’t look wise after nearly 540,000 deaths in the US. But “14 days to flatten the curve” didn’t turn out to be prescient either. The more partisan the narrative, the worse it has fared. Liberals have spent much of the pandemic ...

In the futurist law now named after him, the late Stanford University computer scientist Roy Amara once declared, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” India’s public digital infrastructure — in many ways, an immense online bureaucracy — is an outlier to this principle. The effort ...

Sure, life is inching its way back to normal, but not for taxpayers. That’s why the Internal Revenue Service should extend the filing deadline this year, just as it did in 2020. One of the main reasons to again give filers extra time after April 15 is the Covid-19 relief bill. The legislation calls for making some of the unemployment ...

Bloomberg Tencent Holdings Ltd. shares fell a second day on concern regulators are now turning their sights to Pony Ma’s business empire, fueling a $62 billion wipe-out that one brokerage says obliterated most of the value of its online finance business. The stock fall more than 4% in Hong Kong on Monday. China’s top financial regulators see Tencent as the ...

Bloomberg India’s draft e-commerce rules to prevent creation of “digital monopolies” and aid local startups may raise costs and stymie expansion plans at companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. The draft rules seek to prescribe a code of conduct for online retailers and define cross-border flow of user data, according to a note titled Draft Ecommerce Policy. Prime ...

Bloomberg China’s home prices grew at the fastest pace in six months in February, as a lower supply of projects during a holiday season added to a fear of missing out among buyers. New home prices in 70 major cities, excluding state-subsidised housing, rise 0.36% last month from January, when they gained 0.28%, National Bureau of Statistics figures showed on ...

Bloomberg The Philippines’ renewed surge in coronavirus infections will have limited impact on the economy as authorities impose localised lockdowns and as vaccinations pick up, Economic Planning Secretary Karl Chua said. The Southeast Asian nation, which will likely remain in recession this quarter, has to manage the spike in cases without reinstating stricter movement curbs which will hurt jobs, Chua ...

Bloomberg Singapore home sales fall in February after speculation about property curbs dampened buyer appetite. Purchases of new private apartments fall 60% to 645 last month, Urban Redevelopment Authority data showed on Monday. That compares with 1,632 in January, which exceeded a two-year high. Singapore’s property market rallied even amid the pandemic, seeing a spike among private apartments, shophouses and ...

Bloomberg Indonesia, a top supplier of a key battery metal, will aim to boost sales of electric vehicles with a new regulation that will cut tax breaks for hybrid cars. Battery-powered electric vehicles will retain their 0% luxury tax rate, while plug-in hybrid vehicles will see their tariff increase to 5% from 0%, according to a draft regulation issued by ...

Bloomberg Myanmar’s junta on Monday extended “full martial law” to additional areas in Yangon following a weekend of nationwide protests that left at least 50 people dead in the wake of a brutal crackdown by security forces. Coup leaders first imposed the measure in two townships after the Chinese Embassy asked authorities to guarantee the safety of Chinese investments and ...