In their own Swede time: pandemic pragmatism
By the numbers to date, Sweden's light-touch covid-19 measures may not seem successful. But its pragmatism takes an instructively long view of the pandemic. China’s high-level party machinery brooks n...
12 Okt 202023min
Buy the way? Kyrgyzstan’s post-election chaos
Citizens are furious after a poll seemingly tainted by vote-buying; its annulment leaves a power vacuum that may yet draw in China and Russia. An author’s journey through the history of America’s raci...
9 Okt 202021min
More-civil discourse: Pence and Harris debate
That a housefly could steal the show at America’s only vice-presidential debate is telling, but a discussion with more substance than bombast was a welcome respite. Cuba is experiencing its worst food...
8 Okt 202023min
Clerical era: Iraq in a hard place
A pilgrimage that is sure to become a covid-19 hotspot is a sign of how much the country’s government is losing legitimacy to its clergymen and tribal leaders. Social-media giants’ efforts to scrub vi...
7 Okt 202019min
Sailing into the wind: Boris Johnson
Britain’s prime minister will outline big wind-energy plans at his party’s annual conference, even as the pandemic and Brexit blow his government off course. The sombre tone at a thanksgiving festival...
6 Okt 202022min
Ill-disposed: Trump’s hospital stay
Amid a flurry of conflicting information over the weekend, details of Donald Trump’s progress and prognosis remain worryingly unclear. How will this brush with the virus change the campaign, or the pr...
5 Okt 202021min
In Syria’s trouble: an embattled despot digs in
Unexpected defeats at rebels’ hands, a cratered economy, a hungry citizenry and a runaway covid-19 epidemic: can anything unseat Bashar al-Assad? When Germany reunified, many worried it would upset th...
2 Okt 202022min
Enclave on edge: Armenia and Azerbaijan
The region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been the subject of dispute and skirmishes for decades—but the current conflict threatens to draw in both Turkey and Russia. Rule changes accelerated by the pandemic...
1 Okt 202019min
