Opinion

Most years, the end of the retail industry’s sales calendar is defined by a tidy succession of seasonal events: back-to-school, Halloween and Christmas. With the pandemic, this isn’t an ordinary year. The result? Those shopping rituals are poised to converge into a super season of sorts in October, creating a ...

India’s worst economic slump is no time for the government to sow doubts about the credibility of its institutions. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) postponed its three-day, rate-setting meeting without giving a reason. It was probably cancelled because the panel didn’t have enough people to convene; the six-person committee ...

When Boris Johnson had his breakthrough meeting with then Irish leader Leo Varadkar outside Liverpool in 2019, he had a burning need to strike a Brexit deal and only one major obstacle standing in the way: the Irish border. Faced with either betraying Brexiters in his party, which would have ...

Inch by inch, since the start of the pandemic, the White House has sought to sabotage the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention for the political benefit of President Donald Trump. To an alarming extent, it has succeeded. Once globally recognised as “the best science-based, data-driven agency in the ...

Strong states grow stronger by putting limits on their own power; weak states become weaker by descending into arbitrariness. India has to choose which it wants to be. That’s the message being given to New Delhi by an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague. The panel threw out the Indian ...

Having delivered a heavy blow to the semiconductor plans of China’s biggest technology manufacturer, the US government now seems keen to knock down the nation’s biggest contract chipmaker. The action looks opportunistic. Export restrictions placed on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) mean US companies will have to apply for a ...

Keir Starmer, the Labour Party’s new leader, has made a smooth start wooing British voters. In his former career the leader of the UK’s official opposition was indeed a successful defense lawyer in human rights cases, knighted subsequently for serving as Director of Public Prosecutions. Now he’s restoring Labour’s fortunes ...

Here is a paradox. It is pretty easy to predict the voting patterns of new Supreme Court justices. But it can be exceedingly difficult to predict the votes of justices in specific cases, which means that it can be difficult as well to predict how those cases are going to ...

The US Congress has a full plate, to say the least. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed over 200,000 lives, and the virus will continue to spread this fall and winter. Members of both houses are up for re-election in November. The Senate will probably be asked to approve President Donald ...

It’s important in the fashion world to make a big entrance and Chanel is doing just that with its inaugural 600 million-euro ($700 million) bond. It has chosen to issue debt that’s linked to environmental sustainability targets; the bond includes a penalty if the company doesn’t live up to its ...