Pestilent peninsula: covid in North Korea

Today’s legislative elections in South Korea are the world’s first to take place amid the covid-19 crisis. How have masked campaigners managed, and how are masked voters likely to respond? “Contact tr...

15 Apr 202019min

We speak to Albin Kurti, a reformist prime minister, after his ouster—and ask how American officials may have played a role in his downfall. Gloomy forecasts will dominate this week’s virtual meetings...

14 Apr 202023min

This week, some European countries are beginning to switch their economies back on, but leaders face a grim trade-off between economic health and public health. Meanwhile, bids to finance Europe’s fis...

13 Apr 202022min

Many have forgotten that, even after the second world war, a fascist movement held sway in Britain. Our culture editor recounts the tale of the group that quashed it. Leonora Carrington was an adventu...

10 Apr 202026min

Under Hungary’s shape-shifting prime minister the country has essentially become a dictatorship—and it seems there is little the European Union can do about it. We examine the serious mental-health ef...

9 Apr 202022min

People are spilling from the Chinese metropolis where the global outbreak took hold. But controls actually remain tight, and authorities’ attempts to spin pandemic into propaganda are not quite workin...

8 Apr 202023min

President Jair Bolsonaro still dismisses the disease as “just the sniffles”, so state and local authorities—and the country’s vast slums—have taken matters into their own hands. The physical and menta...

7 Apr 202023min

To keep track of the spread of covid-19, some governments are turning to digital surveillance, using mobile-phone apps and data networks. We ask whether this will work—and examine the threat to privac...

6 Apr 202024min