DONALD TRUMP, an American presidential candidate, denounced it as “a terrible deal”. Another, Hillary Clinton, does not think it meets “the high bar” that should be applied to trade pacts. Yet proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which encompasses 12 countries in Asia and the Americas, including America and Japan, herald it as the biggest multilateral trade deal in 20 years, which will “define the rules of the road” for international commerce. Which is it?

IN NOVEMBER, after months of frantic land reclamation in the South China Sea aimed at boosting its vast territorial claim there, China tried a subtler approach. It opened a think-tank in Arlington, Virginia—an outpost of its National Institute for South China Sea Studies on Hainan, a tropical (and indisputably Chinese) island on the sea’s northern shore. One role for the new think-tank is to make an academic case for China’s vaguely backed assertion that most of the strategically vital waters are within its domain—despite rival claims by South-East Asian countries.  

MOST employers turn to the web to help get the skinny on their job applicants. But what happens when the information they find is inaccurate? Looking himself up on Spokeo, a “people search engine,” Thomas Robins was surprised to read that he was a well-off man in his fifties with a wife, children and a graduate degree. In fact, Mr Robins is in his thirties, childless, unmarried, unlettered and unemployed.