Defrost setting: the Xi-Biden summit
The meeting between superpower presidents was cordial and careful, but it will take far more than a video call to smooth such frosty relations. Europe once had an enviable international rail network—o...
17 Nov 202119min
White flagged: Cuba’s muted protests
White roses, white sheets hung from homes, even white t-shirts: a movement’s symbolic colour was not much in evidence after officials quashed national protests. Part of Saudi Arabia’s plan to wean its...
16 Nov 202119min
Peronists’ peril: Argentina’s elections
The ruling party got a pasting at the polls, owing in part to a reeling economy. We ask what the opposition’s gains mean for the country. The practice of assisted dying is being enshrined in law the w...
15 Nov 202120min
The heat is on: COP26’s final hours
The climate summit in Glasgow is in its last official day, but looks sure to overrun as negotiators thrash out an agreement. When the talking’s over, what will count as success? The rise of film franc...
12 Nov 202120min
Putin’s defiers: repression in Russia
As the economy has deteriorated and the internet has bypassed television, persecution of opponents has become the president’s main tool of political control. Even the pandemic has been harnessed to si...
11 Nov 202119min
Trouble at the border: Belarus and the EU
Around 2,000 people from the Middle East are at the European Union’s eastern frontier. Alexander Lukashenko, the autocratic Belarusian president, promised them passage to the EU. They are pawns in a l...
10 Nov 202121min
Dream on: Biden and social mobility
Americans born at the bottom of the economic ladder find it harder than past generations—or their peers abroad—to climb to the top. The president has plans to change that. But he’s already having to s...
9 Nov 202120min
Control the past: rewriting Chinese history
Over four days in Beijing, the political and military elite are meeting to recast the past. The revised version will depict Xi Jinping as a giant of the stature of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping—and jus...
8 Nov 202120min
