Under the missile flow: North Korea

America’s biggest oil firm has long been recalcitrant on climate matters, so its new net-zero targets may seem surprising. We examine the substance of its pledges—and motivations. For an economist, ti...

19 Tammi 202222min

Austria is set to enact a bold policy of levying fines on the unvaccinated. We look at what is driving governments to such measures, and whether they will work. Japan’s shift in thinking about its gro...

18 Tammi 202222min

Democrats will spend the week battling for a tightening of laws on casting votes; that will overshadow Republicans’ worrying push into how those votes are counted and certified. Earthquakes remain dam...

17 Tammi 202223min

The queen’s second son has been stripped of his titles—an apparent bid to insulate the crown from his legal troubles. But dangers to the prince and to the monarchy remain. A blockade of Mali, intended...

14 Tammi 202223min

While Britons followed covid strictures, the prime minister’s residence hosted boozy gatherings; widespread fury hints that his prevarications this time may be his last as leader. Religious institutio...

13 Tammi 202222min

The country’s children have missed more in-person learning than those in most of the rich world—to their cost. We ask why battles about schooling rage on. Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, ca...

12 Tammi 202222min

This week’s flurry of diplomacy aims to address what Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, says he wants. He cannot get it. Does an invasion of Ukraine hang in the balance? At an annual jamboree of econ...

11 Tammi 202221min

The country has the world’s worst estimated covid-death total—but as another variant takes hold there are reasons for optimism. Mexico’s president has some old-fashioned notions about energy, and his ...

10 Tammi 202221min