One mightily damaging backstory: 1MDB
Five years ago a $4.5bn hole in a development fund scrambled Malaysia’s politics. Now the inquiry has claimed its first scalp: that of Najib Razak, a former prime minister. We examine the grand shift ...
29 Jul 202023min
Feds up: Trump orders troops on America’s streets
Camouflaged personnel with no insignia, protesters bundled into unmarked vans: the President Donald Trump's plan to put federal officers into American cities is a worrying political ploy. Our annual B...
28 Jul 202021min
Bat out of elsewhere? Tracing SARS-CoV-2’s origins
Scientists are looking to South-East Asia to find how the virus got its start in humans. Knowing that could head off future pandemics. It is often hard to blame climate change unequivocally for weathe...
27 Jul 202020min
For old timers’ sake: covid-19 and care homes
The pandemic has taken its greatest toll in the world’s nursing homes—but the systemic problems surrounding elderly care long predate covid-19. Economists’ usual barometers have gone topsy-turvy durin...
24 Jul 202022min
Without a trace: Israel’s covid-19 spike
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has gone from boasting about progress to battling protests as the country’s contact-tracing programme has been overwhelmed. Early and extreme seasonal floods in China...
23 Jul 202020min
Full-meddle racket: Britain’s “Russia Report”
It remains unclear whether influence and misinformation campaigns have had significant effects on Britain’s institutions, or its elections—but only because successive administrations chose not to look...
22 Jul 202022min
Grant them strength, or loan it: Europe’s historic deal
After days of gruelling debate, European leaders have agreed a recovery plan. It includes, for the first time, taking on collective debt—to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros. Jihadism has been...
21 Jul 202022min
Cheques imbalances: America’s partisan stimulus battle
As Congress reconvenes and covid-19 rages largely unabated, the biggest question is how much to prop up the economy—and how to get past partisan rancour about it. With slumping oil prices and a pile o...
20 Jul 202021min
