Current edition Browse all editions Politics KAL's cartoon This week's covers Left behind Decentralising Japan Banyan The favoured GI An unusual museum in is dedicated to Vinegar Joe Viral slurs Many of the world's new mpox cases are in Border disorder By George! Lexington Sudan's civil war Give us this day Egypt's bread subsidies are unsustainable In the crosshairs The Mexican model? Mexico's government is suing American gun manufacturers Fishy business Prelude to a br

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-10-07

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In 'Top Gun: Maverick', Tom Cruise plays a US Navy pilot taking his F -18 fighter jet on a dangerous mission The film was one of the biggest blockbusters of last year. But in China the government prohibited its screening Instead, from April 28th Chinese audiences can watch 'Born to Fly', a film about the People's Liberation Army Air Force pushing the limits of new Chinese jets China's efforts to beat America at the box office aren't always so blatant. But our analysis shows that, at least within China, they are succeeding I n 1986 Régis Debray , a French philosopher, wrote that 'there is more power in rock music, videos, blue jeans… than in the entire Red Army.

https://www.economist.com/interactive/2023/04/29/hollywood-is-losing-the-battle-for-china

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Current edition Browse all editions Politics KAL's cartoon This week's covers Lights, camera, industrial action Hollywood's writers go on strike Bye-bye covid Aid and a bet Snake, rattle and roil Lexington Afghan reality A tepid taste of freedom The opposition looks set to win Thailand's election Banyan America's closest Indo-Pacific allies are cosying up Battle of the bricks Lego, the world's top toymaker, focuses on Chaguan 's new 'Top Gun' normalises war with America Strategic struggle

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-05-06

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Current edition Browse all editions Politics KAL's cartoon Global health Sovereign debt Abebe Aemro Selassie on Africa's brutal funding squeeze Decoding the detente The fault lines in America's policy Sweet and salty Aftershocks The woke maths experiment San Francisco's 'woke maths' experiment Lexington Global summitry Pooches of the Panjshir Southern approaches Narendra Modi's party takes a beating in Karnataka Banyan Myanmar's conflict is dividing South-East A new mandate in the heave

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-05-20

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THE RICH world has a sleep deficit. The average American adult snoozes almost two hours less than their great grandparents did. More than a third of Americans get less than seven hours of kip a night. The resulting fatigue has been linked to Alzheimer's disease, hypertension and other ailments. It may cost America's economy as much as $400bn a year, according to one study. Other wealthy countries are similarly sleepless. Consumption of alcohol and caffeine are partly to blame, as is exposure to phone and computer screens.

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/02/12/the-sleep-tech-industry-is-waking-up

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The Lion House. By Christopher de Bellaigue. Vintage; 304 pages; £20. To be published in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November; $28NOT FOR the first or last time in history, the master of an authoritarian power straddling Europe and Asia looked west—and was reassured to find his adversaries divided. Squabbles among the rulers of western Christendom, theological, commercial and personal, made it easier for Sultan Suleiman to achieve his grand aim.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

https://www.economist.com/culture/2022/03/12/in-the-lion-house-suleiman-the-magnificent-comes-to-life

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THE RALLY stretched half a kilometre along the Danube, past Budapest's Technical University where in 1956 students launched a doomed rebellion against their communist overlords. It was March 15th, the day Hungary commemorates its revolution of 1848. On the stage Peter Marki-Zay, the opposition candidate for prime minister, was invoking history. In 1848, 1956 and 1989, when the communists were finally ousted, Hungarians had been 'on the right side', he said. Now they were embarrassed by their country, which had become the fief of one man: Viktor Orban.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/04/02/hungarys-opposition-struggles-to-beat-viktor-orbans-stealth-autocracy

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'THE INVASION of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin was a massive punctuation point in post-war history,' says Boris Johnson, the British prime minister. 'We are now in a new era.' One sign of this new age came on May 11th, when Mr Johnson travelled first to Sweden and then to Finland to sign 'solemn declarations' with the leaders of both countries; in each case the signatories affirmed that should either one be attacked, the other would be ready to respond with military aid. Another sign came the next day, when Finland's leaders announced they favoured joining NATO.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/05/13/britains-security-deals-with-finland-and-sweden-shine-a-light-on-boris-johnson

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FIRE-FIGHTING FOAM starves the flames of oxygen. A handful of overused words have the same deadening effect on people's ability to think. These are words like 'innovation', 'collaboration', 'flexibility', 'purpose' and 'sustainability'. They coat consultants' websites, blanket candidates' CVs and spray from managers' mouths. They are anodyne to the point of being useless.These words are ubiquitous in part because they are so hard to argue against. Who really wants to be the person making the case for silos? Which executive secretly thirsts to be chief stagnation officer? Is it even possible to have purposelessness as a goal? Just as Karl Popper, a philosopher, made falsifiability a test of whether a theory could be described as scientific, antonymy is a good way to work out whether an idea has any value.

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/05/14/the-woolliest-words-in-business

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Driverless vehicles whizz across five new berths at Tuas Mega Port, which sits on a swathe of largely reclaimed land at the western tip of Singapore. Unmanned cranes loom overhead, circled by camera-fitted drones. The berths are the first of 21 due by 2027. When it is completed in 2040, the complex will be the largest container port on Earth, boasts PSA International, its Singaporean owner. Tuas is a vision of the future on two fronts. It illustrates how port operators the world over are deploying clever technologies to meet the demand for their services in the face of obstacles to the development of new facilities, from lack of space to environmental concerns.

https://www.economist.com/interactive/business/2023/01/14/investments-in-ports-foretell-the-future-of-global-commerce

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Current edition Browse all editions Politics KAL's cartoon Israel at 75 Israel at 75 Take four Lookback in anger Classroom politics Lexington Why Israel is becoming a partisan cause in the A sticky dictatorship Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's autocrat, is winning America, Japan and On , Japan's PM wants diplomacy, not war Love elderly The novel ways old people try to find love in First contact Chaguan 's rulers play the law-and-order card, and lose A contentious birthday Israel's angsty 75

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-04-29

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REED HASTINGS HAS built the culture at Netflix around it. Ray Dalio made it a founding principle at Bridgewater, a successful investment fund. 'Radical candour' is the idea that bracing honesty is the best way to run a business: no one dances around the truth, and swifter feedback improves performance.Most firms rely on a messier doctrine. People rarely say what they mean, but hope that their meaning is nonetheless clear. Think Britain, but with paycheques. To navigate this kind of workplace, you need a phrasebook.

https://www.economist.com/business/2021/11/20/the-business-phrasebook

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HOURS BEFORE Brussels entered 2022, a bombshell dropped. In a draft sent to EU countries, the European Commission proposed classing some nuclear and gas projects as green in its 'taxonomy', a list meant to define sustainable investing. Austria threatened to sue; Germany cried foul. The plan is still likely to win majority support from member states, which have until January 12th to opine. It could set the terms for green investing well beyond Europe. But will it steer capital towards deserving projects?The idea emerged after the 2015 Paris climate deal, when the EU's effort to craft a common green-bond standard for corporate and sovereign issuers revealed that members did not agree on what counted as green.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/01/08/the-eus-green-investing-taxonomy-could-go-global

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CHRIS JONES of the University of California, Berkeley, was on a river in the Amazon rainforest when he put the finishing touches on the world's first online household carbon calculator. That was in 2005. He hoped that, if he could show people how much greenhouse gas was associated with daily activities—driving the car, heating the house—they might change their behaviour and contribute in some small measure to saving the Amazon. Seventeen years and a proliferation of rival calculators later, trackers are providing a wealth of often-neglected information about the carbon emissions of everyday life.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/03/05/carbon-footprint-calculators-and-their-lessons

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CREDIT IS THE financial system's oxygen supply. When it flows freely, it does so unnoticed. When it stops, soon enough everything else does as well. The hypoxic episode that felled the American investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 unleashed chaos, turning a subprime-mortgage crunch into a global financial crisis. Ever since, central banks and market pundits have fixed a hawk-like gaze on credit conditions, wary of a repeat.Today's scramble for safe assets was prompted not by a financial crash but by Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/03/12/western-credit-markets-are-holding-up-remarkably-well

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Current edition Browse all editions Politics KAL's cartoon This week's covers The home front For Russia's war to fail, Ukraine must emerge prosperous, democratic and secure Crack case Hunter Biden's plea bargain will not stop Republicans chasing him Lexington Of buoys and men yoga day Narendra Modi's yoga evangelism Afghanistan Another nationalist obsession has its eyes on Okinawa Dress to impress Fire sale The war in Ukraine is boosting Israel's arms exports An unspooked spook Ukraine

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-06-24

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FEW INDUSTRIES are more vulnerable to events that depress revenues and increase expenses than America's railways. The basic business model is to lug lots of stuff to offset the high fixed costs of owning fleets of locomotives and maintaining thousands of miles of track. That has been hard as America's supply chain has come unglued, first because of covid-19 and then as it has waned. Ports are gridlocked, warehouses over-stuffed and labour unavailable. It has unquestionably been a tough time to be a rail company and, it turns out, a remarkably good time to be one.

https://www.economist.com/business/2021/11/20/times-are-good-for-american-railways

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TO MAKE THE close acquaintance of F.W. de Klerk was to look into the face of a voortrekker. Although he had been comfortably brought up in suburban Johannesburg, his blue eyes still seemed to stare across the veld and the mountains the Afrikaner volk had crossed on the Great Trek in the 19th century. And his set jaw seemed ready to declare, as he often did, the blunt-but-courteous words: 'You are wrong.'Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2021/11/20/fw-de-klerk-had-to-abandon-what-his-ancestors-had-believed-in

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ALL AROUND the world politicians are exercised by the yawning gap between haves and have-nots. For every $1 the average white American household earned in 2019, the average black one made only 51 cents. For every $1 in wealth held by a white household, a black one owned just 15 cents. Joe Biden came into the presidency promising to tackle such disparities, vowing that 'The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.' In New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, promised to 'make homeownership possible again'.

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2022/04/23/when-central-banks-become-one-stop-policy-shops

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RESTORING THE supremacy of America's First Amendment on Twitter seems priority number one for Elon Musk. Inconveniently, his acquisition of Twitter comes as several countries are passing laws to regulate how social-media firms should moderate content.The European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which was agreed on April 23rd, will do most to stymie Mr Musk's plans to turn Twitter back into a place where almost anything goes. 'Be it cars or social media, any company operating in Europe needs to comply with our rules—regardless of their shareholding,' Thierry Breton, the EU's commissioner for the internal market, warned (on Twitter, naturally) hours after the buy-out was announced.

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/04/30/free-speech-idealism-will-clash-with-laws-and-reality

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SEVERAL DECADES ago The Economist's New York office was above the old showroom of Steinway & Sons, piano-makers, on West 57th Street. The way to the office was a staircase to the left; to the right the glossy black pianos stood among rich carpets, and customers could be seen and heard shyly, or boldly, trying them out.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.Your browser does not support the element.Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThe showroom, however, was not Franz Mohr's place.

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2022/05/07/franz-mohr-was-the-man-who-made-great-concerts-possible

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RESTAURANT AND hotel bosses have had a tough year. Some 700,000 hospitality workers threw in the towel on average each month in the past year. Bars, cafés and eateries are 1.3m workers short relative to the 16.9m employed before covid-19. On January 4th the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that a record 4.5m Americans quit their jobs in November, 9% up on a month earlier. The quit rate in leisure and hospitality jumped by a percentage point, to 6.4%. Uncertainty from the Omicron variant may make matters worse: as cases surged in December, restaurant footfall fell sharply, according to OpenTable, an online booking website.

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/01/08/why-workers-are-fleeing-the-hospitality-sector

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A HUDDLE OF 16- and 17-year-olds outside Luton Sixth Form College, in southern England, are describing how the pandemic has affected their lives. It is a long and bitter tale. Their education has suffered from repeated disruption; they have become nervous and listless; they have been unable to get drunk together. One girl says, sadly, that she and her friends became so used to meeting online during lockdowns that they have almost forgotten how to relate in person: 'Even when we're together, it's as though we're not there.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/02/05/a-cohort-of-british-children-has-been-changed-by-covid-19-probably-for-good

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WHETHER OR NOT Vladimir Putin sends Russian troops into Ukraine, increasingly icy relations between East and West may signal a coda to the era of increasing global economic integration which began with the collapse of communism. In the mid-1980s scarcely a quarter of the world's population lived in economies which could be considered open to foreign trade and capital flows, according to an estimate published in 1995 by Jeffrey Sachs, Andrew Warner, Anders Aslund and Stanley Fischer. Less than a decade later, the figure had jumped above 50%, and a three-decade burst of rapid globalisation was under way.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/02/12/the-promise-of-former-eastern-bloc-economies-is-mostly-unfulfilled

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FROM GIANNI VERSACE to Ron DeSantis, Floridians like making fashion statements. On the website for the governor's re-election campaign, fans of Mr DeSantis can buy 'Escape to Florida' T-shirts, featuring prominent Democrats who have visited recently. Those looking for a head-to-toe makeover can opt for 'Freedom over Fauci' flip-flops, denigrating Joe Biden's chief medical adviser. Accessories include 'Let us alone' beverage coolers and two golf balls with the tagline 'Florida's governor has a pair'.

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2022/04/02/florida-is-neither-red-nor-blue-but-more-purple-politically

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HE NEVER WANTED a war and he did not prepare his country for one. He may quote Winston Churchill, but he is no Churchill. He wears khaki but he is leaving the battle-plans to Ukraine's generals. '[The] people are leaders,' declares Volodymyr Zelensky.Speaking to The Economist in a government building fortified with sandbags and surrounded with tank traps, Mr Zelensky is disarmingly authentic and humane. So great is the real-life tragedy that has befallen his nation that there is no room for acting.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/04/02/ukraines-resilience-lies-in-its-peoples-capacity-to-mobilise-spontaneously

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Apr 2nd 2022New York and Washington, DCRENUKA MAHARJAN is a dedicated woman. Over the past two years she has made a regular trip on public transport across three boroughs of New York City, requiring two changes and one hour in either direction, to reach The HopeLine, a food bank in the Bronx. Waiting in the cold outside it one morning, she says the food and nappies (a rare offering) are worth it: 'Only my husband is working. I have to take care of my two babies, so this helps a lot.'Rather than being supplements to the safety net, food banks such as The HopeLine have become something like stopgaps.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/04/02/why-americas-most-successful-anti-poverty-programme-is-going-cold

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Current edition Browse all editions Politics KAL's cartoon This week's covers Lexington The real questions raised by Clarence Thomas's latest scandal Total chaos An ambitious plan for 'total peace' in Colombia is faltering Boba life Chinese bubble tea chains go viral in South-East Kishida in the clear Japan's prime minister has recovered from a rough patch Banyan Knives out Communist Party members must study Xi Jinping's thinking Moderate exercises What to make of 's military drills around Ta

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-04-15

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