Across the nation, Americans argued, wept and marched in anger over the police killings of two black men in two days.

ISRAEL’S high-tech sector seems to be a land of milk and honey. Scarcely a month passes without another announcement of a foreign tech giant buying a local firm. In 2015 Israeli startups raised a record $4.4 billion in venture capital, up by 30% from the previous year. Yet the country once christened the “startup nation” is losing steam. Between 1998 and 2012 the tech industry grew on average by 9% annually, more than double the rate of Israel’s GDP. In all but one of the past six years, the tech sector has expanded at a slower rate than the overall economy.

The main cause for the slowdown is a growing shortage of trained workers, according to a recent report by the chief economist of the ministry of finance. This may come as a surprise, given the country’s reputation for having a deep pool of tech talent, mainly because of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), which rely heavily on technology and churn out thousands of highly skilled workers. But a complex mix of social, educational and business factors is increasingly constraining the size of Israel’s tech workforce.

There is a limit to the size of any industry a small country…Continue reading

Donald Trump on Wednesday said his staff “shouldn’t have” deleted a tweet from his account that immediately drew criticism for evoking anti-Semitic imagery.

The presumptive Republican presidential candidate, reviving recent controversies in his campaign, also reaffirmed his praise of Saddam Hussein.

As with so many similar cases, those protesting the killing of Alton Sterling believe they’ve seen enough to draw the conclusion that he died at the hands of overzealous police.

For many in the G.O.P., it was a painful reminder of how a candidate other than Donald J. Trump could have capitalized on the F.B.I.’s harsh critique.

THE one thing we know for certain about the longer-term consequences of last month’s Brexit vote is that we don’t know what all those consequences will be. For the travel industry, that is especially true. Even so, hope is currently in short supply.

Immediately after the referendum, airlines were lumped in with banks and property firms as the shares to sell. IAG, the parent company of British Airways, has lost a third of its value since the results were announced on 24th June. That is only to be expected. It seems certain that outbound travel from Britain will take a hit. As the pound falls and the rest of the world becomes more expensive, and low business confidence causes firms to rein in corporate travel, fewer Brits will go abroad. (And that is before we factor in the unknowns, such as whether British carriers will be able to maintain unfettered access to EU skies.)

The impact of Brexit on the number of people visiting the United Kingdom (if such a thing will still exist) is much less sure. But a gloomy note from Euromonitor, a research firm,…Continue reading