Hope Hicks, a former model who handled public relations for Ivanka Trump’s purses and shoes, is now Donald Trump’s longest-serving top aide, attending top-level White House decision-making meetings and crafting communications policy.　She testified to Congress this week that she sometimes has been required to tell “white lies” as part of her job. The next day, she said she was resigning.　Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law trying to figure out how to pay a balloon payment on a building he b

There’s a standard playbook for reviving cities by turning them into technology clusters. But not every town can become the next Silicon Valley, or Robot City, or biotech mecca.　Minneapolis has shown that there is another way.　Cities such as Raleigh, San Diego and Pittsburgh have all followed a similar model: Build around a top-ranked research university; bring together elites from government, business, and academia; facilitate the sharing of ideas among campus labs, startups, and big companies;

A few days ago, President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela announced that his government had launched a new state-sponsored cryptocurrency called the petro. He claimed that $735 million worth of the new currency had already been sold, though observers are skeptical, unless state entities have been obliged to buy them. Even they will find it hard to do so, however, as the technology platform on which the petro will be traded has not yet been confirmed.International demand for the petro will not be hel

The time has come to ask whether membership in the European Union is still a quality assurance seal for democracy and the rule of law among member states. The bloc has clearly failed to enforce its stated values on its periphery. Any additional expansion can only dilute them further.　On Monday, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kusnirova were found murdered -- shot with a single bullet each -- in the town where they lived near Bratislava. Kuciak had investigated alleged tax

It’s not about the food. What McDonald’s is really selling to children is the party. The package with puzzles just for them. The games. In some places, the playgrounds. And most of all, the toys.　The fast-food giant must be basking in its latest public-relations victory. By announcing recently that it was taking cheeseburgers and chocolate milk off its Happy Meal menu, it looked like a chain that cared about childhood obesity, while not really changing a thing. That’s right: Cheeseburgers and ch

Xi Jinping can hold off on retirement planning for a few more years, now that China’s Communist Party has announced a proposal to eliminate a 10-year, two-term limit for China’s presidency. That sets up the powerful 64-year-old Xi to remain in office well into his golden years. He shouldn’t be the only one.　Set aside for a moment the question of whether China is wise to usher in one-man rule. The fact is that retirement age limits for other Chinese are a drag on China’s economy and the governmen

On behalf of the people of the United States, I would like to say thank you, South Korea! 　Now I really do not have any formal capacity to say thank you on behalf of my country, but it needs to be said. Your hosting of the Winter Olympics, and the hospitality you showed the country and the world, was perfect timing. Especially for a United States that needed a collective pause, if not another Miracle on Ice. 　For those of you who do not know, the late 1970s until the beginning of 1980 were not e