Redrawing the map: a fragmented Syria
As the country marks ten years of civil war, the economy is crippled; it has broken up into statelets and ethnic enclaves that may never be reunified. Violence against women is sparking a global wave ...
15 Mar 202122min
Casting the net wider: remaking the welfare state
As the Biden administration fires a $1.9trn pandemic-relief bazooka, we consider how governments might rethink welfare: providing more-flexible benefits, investing in human capital and acting as an in...
12 Mar 202122min
Nuclear inaction: the legacy of Fukushima
The cleanup effort in and around the melted-down power plant is still progressing, but rebuilding communities—and, crucially, trust—is proving far more difficult. As Rupert Murdoch turns 90 we look at...
11 Mar 202122min
Whither permitting? Vaccine passports
Formalising systems to divide the vaccinated from the unvaccinated is neither as risky nor as useful as many people think. In any case, vaccine passports are coming. On the anniversary of Tibet’s upri...
10 Mar 202118min
Reconciled to it: America’s stimulus bill
Thanks to a parliamentary contortion called reconciliation, the $1.9trn covid-relief plan is likely to sail through—we examine what is in it and what its passage portends for lawmaking in the Biden er...
9 Mar 202121min
Despair and disparities: covid-19 consumes Brazil
State and local pandemic responses are scattershot; a national effort is all but nonexistent. A creeping sense of fatalism makes for peril far beyond the country’s borders. Aggregate American jobs num...
8 Mar 202122min
Rubber-stamping ground: China’s parliament meets
The National People’s Congress kicked off with two big signals of Beijing’s intentions: a return to economic-growth targets and a plan to eradicate Hong Kong’s vestiges of democracy. On the first-ever...
5 Mar 202121min
Exit stages left: America and the Middle East
The Biden administration would like to pull back from the region; America’s strategic interests have changed, as have regional dynamics. We examine the careful exit that is possible. To evade censors ...
4 Mar 202121min
