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 Juli 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 Juli 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 Juli 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 Juli 202021min
Laughing all the way: banks’ pandemic windfall
Pandemic panic has subsided, and economic pain deferred—so far. But never mind investment banks’ recent triumphs; uncertainty still abounds. Brazil once had a robust “no contact” policy for its isolat...
17 Juli 202022min
No school, hard knocks: developing-world students hit hard
For many of the 1.5bn pupils affected by school closures, fewer lessons just means more labour—or worse. That spells a lifetime of lost earnings, and lost childhoods. Executive pay has long been in th...
16 Juli 202023min
Eastern exposure: Russia’s telling protests
The arrest of a popular governor in the country’s far east has sparked unrest that reveals President Vladimir Putin’s waning legitimacy—and hints at repression to come. Turkey’s president has turned t...
15 Juli 202022min
Crude awakening: the Arab world after oil
Historic price fluctuations are hastening a post-oil transition that many Arab countries were already contemplating. That could foment plenty of unrest, but also some much-needed reforms. Not many Ame...
14 Juli 202019min
