Complacency, populism and poor infrastructure fueled a devastating second wave of Covid-19 in India, a disaster that has infected millions and wrought havoc well beyond its borders thanks to a new, more contagious variant. But none of those failings are unique to the country. So why are we not…

When much of the world is still desperate for Covid-19 vaccinations, a handful of wealthy places are beginning to have the opposite problem. Hong Kong is one. Despite a free and easily accessible program open to all adults since April, only just over 10% of the population of 7.5 million has had…

Alexey Navalny long avoided the fate of Russian opposition voices who have been removed with regularity and impunity. But with his anti-corruption campaign, popular YouTube videos and a “smart voting” strategy that encourages voters to back candidates with the best chance of defeating Kremlin picks…

More than 910 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been given and the number is climbing daily. So far, though, the vast majority of those given a shot and targeted by campaigns have one thing in common: They’re adults. That was the right place to start the world’s largest vaccination drive, but it…

It’s been an awkward time for the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Gao Fu was cited over the weekend as telling a health conference that the agency was considering options to improve the efficacy of China’s shots against Covid-19, which was currently “not high.” His…

Angel Gurria, preparing to step down after 15 years as secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, had parting words of advice as the world considers its post-Covid recovery: “Put a big fat price on carbon.” Canada is already there. The question of how the…

With 1.4 billion consumers, China has a powerful weapon it is not shy of using. In the past few years, Beijing has held tourists back from shopping jaunts to South Korea to punish Seoul for deploying a US missile shield, and dropped National Basketball Association broadcasts over an official’s…

One of the vignettes in “Ten Years,” a dystopian Hong Kong film anthology from 2015, focuses on a Cantonese-speaking taxi driver, tormented as he finds himself hemmed in by his failure to learn standard Mandarin, China’s official language. Unable to ply certain routes, to work his GPS navigation…

Hong Kong’s hesitant vaccination drive was dealt a fresh blow on Wednesday when officials temporarily halted BioNTech SE Covid vaccinations. A fumbled communication effort, after months of mixing politics and public health, threatens to further undermine trust. Much like Europe, grappling with…