On October 6, US President Donald Trump posted a tweet claiming that the common flu sometimes kills “over 100,000” Americans in a year. “Are we going to close down our Country?” he asked. “No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most..
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The tide has been turning against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Oafishly, he has managed to convert that tide into a deluge of dissatisfaction assisted by the gravitational pull of singular incompetence. Much of this is due to such errors of communication as committed last month, when he got..
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Many people would have been surprised and shocked to hear the Mumbai Police Commissioner calling the media and telling that Republic TV has falsified the TRP rating. Given the various problems Mumbai is facing now in addition to the ongoing COVID 19 crisis, is this matter so important for the..
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At the recent United Nations General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that his country will strive to become carbon neutral by 2060. It was a potentially highly consequential announcement, and it deserves more attention – not least from the European Union. China produces nearly..
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Having long been buttressed by ample liquidity, financial markets are entering the final quarter of 2020 amid an increasingly tentative global economic recovery, unusual political uncertainties, and lagging fiscal and structural policy responses. And these headwinds come on top of the COVID-19..
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Unlike tens of millions of people around the world who have contracted COVID-19 because of their poverty, bad luck, vulnerability as essential workers, or poor decisions by policymakers, US President Donald Trump’s infection is of his own making. Trump’s disdain for science and his brazen..
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The world’s most dynamic economy is governed by a communist party, whereas its previous capitalist stronghold is under the misrule of a man whose companies have gone bankrupt six times. With leading political ideologies becoming increasingly incoherent, labels seem to mean little anymore. In the..
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Joe Biden has consistently held a wide polling lead over US President Donald Trump ahead of November’s election. But, despite Trump’s botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic – a failure that has left the economy far weaker than it otherwise would have been – he has maintained a marginal..
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He was very much one of those cricketers who made the pulse race, a figure for the advocates of a faster variant of the game. Nothing of the solid blocker in the man, though he could, if needed, linger at the crease. Australia’s Dean Jones sported equipment perfect for the shorter format of the..
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In her first State of the European Union address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered a wide-ranging view of the current moment. She touted Europe’s recent achievements and identified its goals for the coming years. She dedicated significant attention to the European Green..
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China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, recently declared that aggression and expansionism have never been in the Chinese nation’s “genes.” It is almost astonishing that he managed to say it with a straight face. Aggression and expansionism obviously are not genetic traits, but they have..
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COVID-19 has now killed 200,000 people in the United States. Many Americans – including US President Donald Trump – play down the figure by focusing on victims’ age and comorbidities (which include common conditions such as diabetes and hypertension) and emphasizing that they do not..
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The Sperry Corporation was an American manufacturer of electronic components, information-technology equipment, and defense systems that obtained lucrative government armaments contracts after the United States entered World War II. When the firm reduced its output after the war, a large part of..
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Every time a government introduces any new reform measures after exhaustive study to improve governance in India , it has become the practice for the opposition parties and sections of NGOs and activists to oppose it. This is happening now and it has also happened earlier when BJP was the..
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The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have curtailed globalization in ways that the current US administration could scarcely have dreamed up even a year ago. But, viewed in a broader context, this year’s retreat from globalization is merely the latest chapter in an ongoing process that has left the..
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Japan’s parliament is scheduled to confirm Yoshihide Suga this week as the country’s new prime minister. He will replace Shinzo Abe, who announced his resignation last month for health reasons, after almost eight years in office. Japanese and international observers are now asking whether the..
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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has hailed the agreement normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates – which the two countries will sign at a White House ceremony on September 15 – as a historic step that equals Israel’s previous peace deals with Egypt and..
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It was a calamity in cultural terms likened to the destruction of the Buddhist statues of Bamyan and the ancient city of Palmyra. The explosive eradication of two Aboriginal sites in West Australia’s Juukan Gorge in May, said to be 46,000 years old, moved Peter Stone, the UNESCO chair in Cultural..
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In grand power politics, there are only national interests, not friendships. This is a point often missed on Australia’s dedicated Americanophiles. Faith is put in such untestable propositions as extended nuclear deterrence. Faith is also unqualified. Foreign conflicts with US forces are bound to..
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The World Bank’s Doing Business index has been both conceptually and operationally suspect since its inception in 2003, but mainstream economists have only recently started to criticize it. Although the Bank’s own recent acknowledgement of some of the problems is welcome, the index has already..
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The US recovery is losing momentum. Job growth is slowing, the economy is still down 10.7 million jobs since February, and 36% of unemployed workers are now classified..
