Mar 31st 2021

Message in a bottleneck: Don't give up on globalisation

The world this week

Leaders

Covid-19

How Europe has mishandled the pandemic

What happened and what does it mean for the union?

Message in a bottleneck

Global supply chains are still a source of strength, not weakness

Resilience comes not from autarky but from diverse sources of supply

Breaking the stalemate

To unblock Israeli politics, get rid of Binyamin Netanyahu

His rivals have the seats, but do they have the will?

Put a plug in it

Governments should set targets to reduce methane emissions

It would rapidly make a difference to climate change

Special drawing wrongs

Issuing special drawing rights will be a sign of failure for the IMF

Poor countries need more help, but it should be transparent and targeted

Letters

On the filibuster, UN peacekeepers, climate change, covid-19, cats

Letters to the editor

Briefing

The lack of needles and the damage done

Why the EU’s covid-19 vaccination programme went wrong

The commission should have done much better

Ever closer union?

Europe’s radical economic response to covid-19

The EU can now borrow, but how well can the member nations spend?

United States

Not so peachy

Georgia’s new voting law triggers legal challenges

America’s upper-arms race

Americans are rushing to get vaccinated as covid-19 cases spread

Derek Chauvin

The trial of Derek Chauvin, accused of killing George Floyd, begins

California politics

The drive to recall Gavin Newsom will be costly to California

New York’s governor

The tarnishing of Andrew Cuomo

Ghost kitchens

Cooking up a new business model during the pandemic

The juvenile criminal-justice system

Reforming Maryland’s cruel treatment of young offenders

Lexington

Joe Biden’s strong start

The Americas

Blood and money

The influence of Central American dynasties is ebbing

Chamorro tomorrow?

A family of six Nicaraguan presidents looks to provide a seventh

It takes two to disentangle

Argentina is in no hurry to strike a deal with the IMF

Asia

BFFs once more

America rediscovers its alliance with Japan

Beggars, but choosers

Myanmar’s military coup has riven the Buddhist monkhood

Masters of disillusion

South Koreans see politics as a choice between two bad options

In the name of God

Malaysians are fighting one another over the word “Allah”

Banyan

ASEAN will lose relevance if it ignores the coup in Myanmar

China

Clearing out the foreign

China wants to make its Christians more Chinese

Anywhere but here

A joint WHO-China study of covid-19’s origins leaves much unclear

Chaguan

China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

Middle East & Africa

Too many kingmakers

The complicated dance to unseat Binyamin Netanyahu

Apps and the oppressed

Clubhouse gives Arabs a space to speak freely

Always going big

The jam in the Suez canal highlights Egypt’s taste for mega-projects

Hoping for change

Tanzania’s new president surely can’t be worse than the old one

Unhappy hunting grounds

The pandemic is a gift to poachers in Africa

Europe

A new hypothesis

The French armed forces are planning for high-intensity war

Vial stuff

Serbia is outpacing nearly every country in the EU at vaccination

Don’t mention the virus

Germany’s management of covid-19 is growing shakier

Baltic bards

Latvia’s ancient poetry is getting its first major translation

Charlemagne

How Netflix is creating a common European culture

Britain

The Red Wall reconsidered

The truth behind the Tories’ northern strongholds

Beating expectations

British firms are adapting to lockdowns—and confounding forecasters

Girls aloud

Britain’s private schools are caught in a sexual-abuse scandal

When separatists separate

The return of Alex Salmond

Cold dinner

Deliveroo’s listing is less appetising than hoped

Christianity

Lockdown has turned Christianity into a winner-take-all business

Bagehot

David Cameron’s woes highlight the plight of Britain’s former leaders

International

Spreading the needle

Almost one billion doses of covid-19 vaccines have been produced

Business

Swept up in a storm

Consumer boycotts warn of trouble ahead for Western firms in China

WeSurvive

WeWork begins a humbler second act

Riding Hon Hai

Hon Hai, Apple’s biggest iPhone assembler, is eyeing cars

American newspapers

Billionaires battle for Tribune Publishing

Bartleby

The benefits of part-time work

Fasten your seat belts

Flying taxis are about to take off at last

Schumpeter

Intel should beware of becoming a national champion

Finance & economics

Margin call of the wild

Archegos, a family office, brings Nomura and Credit Suisse big losses

Performance anxiety

How has the IMF fared during the pandemic?

Neither predator nor pal

What 100 contracts reveal about China’s development lending

Mission critical

Governments have identified commodities essential to economic and military security

From the red earth

The electric-car boom sets off a scramble for cobalt in Congo

Buttonwood

What the enthusiasm for funding startups means for the VC world

Free exchange

What if Europe’s fiscal largesse were as generous as America’s?

Science & technology

Global warming

Those who worry about CO2 should worry about methane, too

Books & arts

The spoils of war

The looted Benin bronzes should be returned

The Amazon

The price of progress in Peru

The human stained

Philip Roth’s uneventful turmoil

Daze of the dead

Reckoning with a family’s past, and a country’s

Cabin fever

Rachel Whiteread’s haunting new sculptures

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

A dark conundrum

Americans are driving less, but more are dying in accidents

Obituary

An Englishman in Paris