January, 2018

• 3 January

  As protests rage in Iran, Trump’s Tehran policy faces sanctions test

  

  WASHINGTON / AGENCIES US President Donald Trump has signaled support for anti-government protests in Iran, but in two weeks he faces a decision on US policy towards the Islamic Republic that suddenly seems riskier than it did a week ago. The six days of demonstrations in several Iranian cities began over economic conditions, and Trump must decide by mid-January whether ...

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• 3 January

  Syrian army thrust ahead to end ‘base siege’

  

  AMMAN / Reuters The Syrian army backed by Russian jets escalated bombing of the last rebel bastion on the eastern outskirts of Damascus as they prepared to break a siege of an army base encircled by opposition forces, residents and witnesses said on Wednesday. They said the army was amassing elite forces to prepare for a major assault on the ...

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• 3 January

  US hardens immigration stance

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump is hardening his demands for a deal to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, a dispute with congressional Democrats that hangs over talks this week to avoid a government shutdown. Any deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, must also forbid immigrants from sponsoring family members to join them in the US, ...

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• 3 January

  US needs a balanced-budget amendment more than ever

  

  Today’s political discord is less durable and dangerous than a consensus, one that unites the political class more than ideology divides it. The consensus is that, year in and year out, in good times and bad, Americans should be given substantially more government goods and services than they should be asked to pay for. Lamentations about the paucity of bipartisanship ...

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• 3 January

  Jack Ma needs to prove he’s really serious about coming to America

  

  I guess a handshake with POTUS-to-be wasn’t a help after all. A year after Chinese billionaire Jack Ma met US President-elect Donald Trump, the founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has finally given up on his bid to buy MoneyGram International Inc. for $18 per share. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US dragged its feet on giving the ...

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• 3 January

  China’s rail rejuvenation story awaits a happy ending

  

  Five years after two high-speed trains collided in the eastern city of Wenzhou, China’s railway companies are making a comeback. It’s not easy to find value after a 51 percent rally in the MSCI China Index during 2017. So lately, sell-side banks have been telling their clients a rail renaissance story. CRRC Corp., the world’s largest maker of equipment for ...

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• 3 January

  Social media is terrible, but it doesn’t have to be

  For the social-media business, this New Year is one of grim tidings. Every day, it seems, pioneers in the field are offering mea culpas — airing regrets, expressing caution, apologizing for a technology that seems to have run amok. One former Facebook Inc. executive recently conceded that the network is “ripping apart the social fabric.” A former engineer has warned ...

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• 3 January

  Solar’s bright future is further away than it seems

  

  There is now a doctrine of what I call “solar triumphalism”: the price of panels has been falling exponentially, the technology makes good practical sense, and only a few further nudges are needed for solar to become a major energy source. Unfortunately, this view seems to be wrong. Solar energy could be a boon to mankind and the environment, but ...

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• 3 January

  A retailers’ guide to curb online returns

  

  Santa Claus has left us long time back with a sleigh load of sweaters, toys and electronics — some of which we didn’t ask for, don’t want or can’t use. And so now, as legions of people say “no thanks” to some of the gifts they unwrapped on Christmas morning, about $90 billion of those holiday goodies are going back ...

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• 3 January

  Chinese populism lives in a video-sharing app

  

  Yang Yang, a 22-year-old Chinese corn farmer, spends two to three hours per day streaming video of life in his cliffside village to smartphones across China. He spends lots of time clinging to a cliffside ladder, one hand on his selfie stick, while he banters with fans about village life. It’s hardly riveting television, but in China it has an ...

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