Ballot blocks: the squeeze on Hong Kong
The territory’s elections have been postponed, its activists barred from running—police are even targeting them abroad. What next for the democracy movement? We ask whether the global protests about r...
3 Aug 202023min
Living larger: Google’s challenges
Enormous growth over 22 years has brought challenges, both from within and from outside; we examine the tech behemoth’s prospects. Wealth has always exploded wherever humans interacted more—and so hav...
31 Jul 202022min
Barriers to entry: covid-19 and migration
The crisis has disproportionately squeezed migrants and has given many leaders an excuse to tighten borders. Will the restrictions outlast the pandemic? Balkan countries were notorious for organised c...
30 Jul 202022min
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
