Swimming against the currency: Turkey
A central bank struggling for independence, dwindling foreign reserves to prop up the currency and a president who just hates rates: Turkey’s economy looked shaky even before covid-19. Online dating c...
21 Touko 202018min
Politics trumps co-operation: the WHO’s annual meeting
Rhetoric and posturing at the World Health Organisation’s annual assembly reveal an agency under geopolitical stresses just when global co-operation is needed most. Illegal logging has become an exist...
20 Touko 202022min
Extreme measures: America’s far right
Extremists are cropping up at protests and expanding their reach online. They see the pandemic as proof of their worldview, and as an opportunity to spread their messages. After systematically ignorin...
19 Touko 202021min
Carriers and the disease: the airlines set for hard landings
Which firms will fly above the covid-19 clouds? Big, low-cost carriers with strong finances seem likeliest, but either way consolidation is inevitable. The Indian state of Kerala seems to be handling ...
18 Touko 202021min
Continental divides: covid-19 strains the EU
What started as a public-health crisis is developing into an existential one. The most fundamental question to be addressed is: what is the European Union for? Hopes of helpful change by El Salvador’s...
15 Touko 202021min
Bibi steps: Israel’s long-awaited government
After three elections and 16 months, the unity government between sworn rivals Binyamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz gets to work tonight. Can it withstand the coming political storms? Frenetic research ...
14 Touko 202020min
Fool Britannia? A covid-19 response under scrutiny
After a series of government missteps, people in Britain—and, increasingly, outside it—are lambasting the covid-19 response. That has great reputational costs. In a story suited to a television drama,...
13 Touko 202020min
Moveable feast: a global food system adapts
The vast network moving food from farm to fork has shifted gears mightily in response to covid-19. But some will still go hungry; governments must resist the urge to crimp exports. Inflation statistic...
12 Touko 202021min
