On a recent warm and breezy Saturday night a few dozen Russians—mostly in their 20s and 30s—crammed into a small Soviet-era apartment in Vakke, a well-heeled part of Tbilisi, Georgia’s … Read More
“I am in a hurry,” says Conny Helder, a Dutch minister who juggles the portfolios of sport and care for the elderly. She is referring to the second half of … Read More
It was just the sort of start a host nation hopes for. On July 6th the opening game of the 2022 European Women’s Football Championship saw England beat Austria 1-0. … Read More
It is just one of thousands of similar stories. Juan Cuatrecasas’s son attended a school in Bilbao run by Opus Dei, a Catholic institution. Around age 12, he became afraid … Read More
King norvic tarroyo lives with his parents and five siblings in a slum near the sea wall in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The eight-year-old has not set foot … Read More
Laura buckingham could have died three times. Ms Buckingham, 37, has one son. She has also had 11 planned pregnancies that have gone wrong. In one case a miscarriage led … Read More
“Money no longer had any value in Istanbul,” laments the narrator of “My Name is Red”, a novel by Orhan Pamuk set in the 16th century. “[B]akeries that once sold … Read More
FIRST IT WAS rugby union. Now it is swimming. On June 19th the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA), swimming’s global governing body, ruled that transgender women—ie, biological males who consider … Read More
DURING the early weeks of the pandemic in 2020, as China imposed strict controls on the movement of its citizens, technology became the main means of tackling anxiety and depression. … Read More
The war in Ukraine has exposed the vehicle’s vulnerabilities. They can be overcome Source link
Rose, a 40-year-old woman in Manila, long beaten up by her husband, finds her predicament markedly worsen as the covid-19 lockdown leaves him at home most of the time. A … Read More
When shadrack lolokuru was “nine or ten”, his relatives put him into a bucket and lowered him into a well. From the murky bottom, he filled the bucket and passed … Read More
When shadrack Lolokuru was “nine or ten”, his relatives put him into a bucket and lowered him into a well. From the murky bottom, he filled the bucket and passed … Read More
Never before have Western economic sanctions proliferated in such numbers. More have been slapped on entities connected to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th than had been … Read More
Never before have Western economic sanctions proliferated in such numbers. More have been slapped on entities connected to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th than had been … Read More
WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN was first elected president of Russia in 2000, he changed little in the office he inherited from Boris Yeltsin. Yet in place of a pen on the … Read More
WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN was first elected president of Russia in 2000, he changed little in the office he inherited from Boris Yeltsin. Yet in place of a pen on the … Read More
THE MEGAPHONE has been taken away. On January 8th Twitter, a social network, announced that it was “permanently suspending” President Donald Trump’s account. Viewed in isolation, the two tweets that … Read More
LIBERALS HAVE become lazy when thinking about the mob. They have celebrated “people power” when it threatens regimes they disapprove of, in the Middle East, say, while turning a blind … Read More
THE MOB that rampaged through the Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 6th would acknowledge little in common with the pro-democracy activists who invaded Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) in … Read More
WHATSAPP, WHICH 2bn people use to send some 100bn messages a day, is rarely in the news. When it is, the stories are mostly about whether, in order to increase … Read More
LAURENT FRAT is standing on top of a ridge line in the French alps, preparing to leap down to the valley below. If something goes wrong, he will die. “If … Read More
MYRANDA CHANCEY loves being pregnant. So much so, that after having three children of her own, the 26-year-old decided in 2019 to be pregnant for someone else: “I think everyone … Read More
AT FIRST GLANCE, a murder in Istanbul, an abduction in Dubai and a deportation from Austria may seem to be unrelated. But they are all part of a disturbing pattern … Read More
A COMMAND CENTRE to scan the digital realm for global disinformation campaigns. Standardised plugs for electric cars that will work both in America and in the European Union (EU) and … Read More
IN NORMAL TIMES it is notoriously difficult to get past the bouncers at Berghain, a techno nightclub in eastern Berlin. But in September the establishment flung its doors wide: anyone … Read More
DURING HIS final days Mohamed Monir, an Egyptian journalist, was so short of breath he could barely speak. In a video recorded in July last year, as his final hours … Read More
IT HAS BEEN 11 months since anyone hugged Larry. The 62-year-old accountant lives alone in Chicago, which went into lockdown last March in response to covid-19. He has heart problems … Read More
EMILY CLARK’S boys did not return to class in September, when schools in England opened to all pupils for the first time since the spring. Her three school-aged sons had … Read More
AT THE NUREMBERG trials, which began on November 20th 1945, allied forces prosecuted leading Nazis for atrocities committed during the Holocaust and the second world war. Among the charges against … Read More
GINA BISIGNANO cut an unusual figure among the rioters on January 6th. Not many chose to storm the Capitol dressed in Chanel boots, a Louis Vuitton sweater and fashionable sunglasses. … Read More
This article has been updated since its publication. WHEN THE first covid-19 vaccines began to be distributed in December, Jürgen Stock, the secretary-general of Interpol, the world’s policing body, called … Read More
ON THE MORNING of November 13th last year Zambia’s vice-president told parliament, “This country will not default.” Hours later the inevitable happened. Having destroyed its relationship with the IMF, struggled … Read More
“I DID NOT get pregnant by choice,” says Annunciata, a mother of eight in Mweso, eastern Congo. Her husband often raped her. “Husbands do that,” she says matter-of-factly. He hit … Read More
TO SHOW HOW her husband would hit her, Ana (not her real name) makes a fist with her slender fingers and swings. He began soon after their marriage when she … Read More
THE COVID-19 pandemic has done nothing good for the mood of Park Ha-young, an undergraduate at Seoul National University. She spent much of last year worrying about the disease, and … Read More
LOOK ONLY at the top of the photograph of four men posing in military garb and the mood seems light. One man smiles. Another puffs on a cigarette while staring … Read More
THE PEOPLE OF the dusty eastern Congolese town of Mubambiro put little faith in the protection promised by the UN’s blue helmets in their midst. Fabrice Zahiga, a government functionary … Read More
MANUEL SUFFERED two serious brain injuries as a child in Denver, Colorado. The first was the result of a fall. The second occurred when someone threw a rock at his … Read More
FLIGHT EK 787 touched down in Accra at 7.39am on February 24th. It was carrying 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine. The shots arrived in Ghana from the Serum Institute … Read More
THE 13TH hole at Augusta National, named Azalea after the riotous pink blooms behind the green, is one of golf’s most celebrated par-fives. Its fairway turns sharply left after 275 … Read More
GEORGINA IS IN no hurry to get back to the office. The 37-year-old, who works in financial services in Geneva, has been working from home for most of the past … Read More
CALL IT “Zoom face-envy”. Because of the rise of video-conferencing during the pandemic, legions now spend hours staring at their own faces and, inevitably, comparing them with those of others. … Read More
IN CENTRAL Lusaka a brand-new flyover flutters with the green, white and saffron of the Indian flag. Throughout the Zambian capital lorries produced by Tata Motors, part of the steel-to-tech … Read More
RACHEL GRIMES served three tours of Northern Ireland as an officer in the British army. Her colleagues in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the region’s erstwhile police force, noticed that things … Read More
WESTERN DEFENCE ministries are talking up their willingness to take on a new enemy: climate change. In March Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, wrote that “the changing climate is altering … Read More
WHILE ASSORTED G20 “Sherpas”, officials who do the donkey work on summits, gathered in Dhahran in Saudi Arabia in March last year, lockdowns were starting and international travel was stopping. … Read More
NOBODY LIKES a call from the taxman. Donald Rumsfeld, who as America’s defence secretary oversaw a budget bigger than the economy of a typical country, nonetheless finds the rules so … Read More
IN MARCH, BENEATH the chandeliers of the Elysée palace, four adult cousins met Emmanuel Macron, France’s president. What really happened, they wanted to know, to their grandfather, Ali Boumendjel, a … Read More
“ON SOME DAYS everything gets totally out of hand,” sighs Katharina Boesche, a German self-employed lawyer and mother of three. Fourteen months of closures and semi-closures of her daughters’ schools … Read More
IN MARCH, President Joe Biden asked his spooks how the covid-19 pandemic had started. Contradicting claims made last year by Donald Trump, who said the intelligence services had shown him … Read More
IT IS POSSIBLE that the chain of infections which spread SARS-CoV-2 around the world began, as most new diseases do, when an animal virus found its way unaided into humans, … Read More
HOURS BEFORE Jo Phoenix, a professor of criminology at Britain’s Open University, was due to give a talk at Essex University about placing transgender women in women’s prisons, students threatened … Read More
A PILE OF fake corpses littered the heart of Bangkok. The bodies—white sacks stuffed with hay and spattered with red paint—symbolised Thai victims of covid-19. “They’re dead because of the … Read More
WHEN THE Turkish coastguard found them in the Aegean in the dead of night, they had been adrift for three hours. The air was hissing out of their rubber dinghy. … Read More
May 3rd 2022 | Budapest, Hong Kong, Mumbai and St Petersburg Olga Rudenko has a litany of worries as editor of the Kyiv Independent, an online newspaper in Ukraine. Since … Read More
TOM MAPLES spent five days and almost $7,000 getting home to London from Tanzania in May. Many African countries are on the English “red list”, meaning anyone who has visited … Read More
“THE VIRUS MYSTERY”, broadcast on August 12th, drew uncommonly wide attention for a Danish television documentary. That was because it featured Peter Ben Embarek, an expert on food security and … Read More
Aug 22nd 2021 ONCE AMERICA announced that it would not save its client state, things unravelled quickly. As the enemy seized province after province, government soldiers shed their uniforms and … Read More
Aug 28th 2021 TOM EISENHAUER remembers driving through Manitoba, a province in central Canada, more than a decade ago. Surrounding his car were fields of cold-weather crops, such as wheat, … Read More
IN LATE JULY, less than a week after the British government lifted most of its remaining covid-19 restrictions, several thousand people nonetheless gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest against … Read More
Sep 4th 2021 FOR MUCH of this year, the global distribution of covid vaccines has been enormously inequitable. The rollout has been a two-speed affair, with richer countries in the … Read More
Sep 10th 2021 WILL ANYTHING ever be the same? In the days after 9/11, when all were stunned, it was clear the world had changed profoundly. Less obvious was just … Read More
Sep 11th 2021 BASRA AND TORORO “A WOMAN WHO drives a car will be killed,” says Sheikh Hazim Muhammad al-Manshad. He says it matter-of-factly, without raising his voice. The unwritten … Read More
THE JANICKI OMNI PROCESSOR, a $2m machine paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, turns human waste into water and electricity. In poor cities such as Dakar in … Read More
Sep 17th 2021 Only once in its history has America handed over a nuclear submarine propulsion plant, the crown jewels of military technology, to another country. That was 63 years … Read More
Sep 19th 2021 JUST OCCASIONALLY, you can see the tectonic plates of geopolitics shifting in front of your eyes. Suez in 1956, Nixon going to China in 1972 and the … Read More
Sep 22nd 2021 IN SEPTEMBER 2020 doctors and public-health officials in the northern hemisphere were on high alert. They did not know how covid-19 would behave in the first winter … Read More
Oct 1st 2021 Natasha Loder and Simon Akam jointly won a Feature of the Year prize from the Medical Journalists’ Association for their coverage in The Economist and 1843 of … Read More
HIS ARM and a leg wrapped in bandages, Artyom Uymanen stood outside a St Petersburg voyenkomat, or military recruitment centre, in 2019 to protest against Russia’s mandatory military draft. The … Read More
Oct 7th 2021 DELHI, NAIROBI AND NORWICH SIINA KARBIN, a Finn living in Vienna, had never imagined paying someone to tutor her children. But then in early 2020 Austria’s schools … Read More
Oct 8th 2021 THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE has not had the greatest few years. In 2019, to great fanfare, it was given to Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, … Read More
Oct 13th 2021 “A NEW GLOBAL energy economy is emerging.” Thus declared Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, a global forecaster, launching the organisation’s World Energy Outlook, its … Read More
Oct 16th 2021 DAKAR, DUBAI, ISTANBUL, NEW YORK AND SINGAPORE ON OCTOBER 8TH two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel peace prize for their “efforts to safeguard … Read More
Oct 16th 2021 THE DAY before Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel peace prize, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta stood in remembrance outside the Moscow apartment block where his newspaper’s most … Read More
Oct 23rd 2021 LAST-MINUTE APPEALS are common in the weeks preceding the COP, the UN’s annual climate summit. Green groups urge world leaders to promise bold action. Poor countries ask … Read More
MANY COUNTRIES did not require passports before the first world war. But as the conflict spread, states scrambled to introduce travel documents to help secure their borders. The result, after … Read More
COP26, THE UN climate summit that began in Glasgow on Sunday, has got off to an inauspicious start. The city itself is grappling with a strike by rubbish collectors, who … Read More
Nov 4th 2021 Kyiv and São Paulo Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. Save time by … Read More
IT IS A little-known fact that there is no formally agreed rule for how decisions must be made within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose parties are … Read More
Apr 30th 2022 Kyiv and Vienna BEFORE VLADIMIR PUTIN invaded Ukraine on February 24th, many Europeans fretted that their region was getting older and that more people were dying than … Read More
MORE THAN a day after it was meant to finish, COP26 finally came to an end, with 197 parties agreeing to the newly-dubbed “Glasgow Climate Pact”. There were several notable … Read More
Nov 13th 2021 MORE THAN a day after it was meant to finish, COP26 finally came to an end, with 197 parties agreeing to the newly-dubbed “Glasgow Climate Pact”. There … Read More
Nov 13th 2021 Amsterdam and Ottawa SHORTLY BEFORE Ángel Hernández handed his wife the glass of barbiturates that would kill her, he asked her once again if she wanted to … Read More
LATE IN THE afternoon of Saturday November 13th, when the COP26 climate talks were nearly 24 hours into overtime, the European Commission’s vice president, Frans Timmermans, took the floor. He … Read More
AS COP26 FINALLY came to a close on November 13th, more than 24 hours behind schedule, the mood inside the drab temporary buildings erected to house it on the banks … Read More
Nov 25th 2021 ON MAY 24TH 2019 a Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX launched 60 communication satellites into a low orbit around the Earth. That evening they appeared as … Read More
THE BOSS of the firm that invented the first effective vaccine against the virus that causes covid-19 is refusing to panic about the spread of Omicron, its newest variant. “I … Read More
Nov 30th 2021 YOU HAVE heard it many times during the pandemic: nobody is safe until everyone is safe. Large unvaccinated populations in poor countries will contract covid-19. The virus … Read More
Dec 4th 2021 ISTANBUL, MOSCOW AND ROME ALI AHMAD, a British security guard, was arrested while on holiday in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2019. He had attended a … Read More
Dec 11th 2021 Madison and Paris THE ALLIANT ENERGY CENTRE, a stadium complex in Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, hosts all sorts of events, from exhibitions to concerts. In November … Read More
Dec 18th 2021 EXPONENTIAL GROWTH is a dizzying thing. In the week to December 8th Britain saw 536 new cases of covid-19 ascribed to the Omicron variant, less than 0.5% … Read More
Jan 1st 2022 WHEN CHINA’S government censors books, bars “effeminate men” from television or spoon-feeds Communist Party dogma to schoolchildren, liberals agree that its behaviour is shockingly repressive. But when … Read More
ASK A VICAR, a rabbi or an imam about the biggest challenge facing his or her congregation, and the need to foster spiritual values in a secular world may leap … Read More
Jan 15th 2022 DAVID FRANK started working for tips when he was 11 years old, delighting restaurant diners in New York with his magic tricks. As a teenager he would … Read More
SCOTT AND his then wife, who live in Australia, had a vile but not unusual divorce. Their lawyers, he said, “fired off affidavits and legal letters at each other” for … Read More
Jan 29th 2022 DURING DONALD TRUMP’S presidency many people looked afresh at China’s technological prowess. Some concluded that it posed a threat to Western economies, and perhaps even to global … Read More
Feb 4th 2022 Kampala, New Delhi and São Paulo FRADIA BULAGE, a school nurse in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, says the 100,000 shillings ($29) the government gave her last year through … Read More
Feb 12th 2022 Berlin, Brussels, Kyiv, Moscow and Paris VLADIMIR PUTIN’S giant oval table in the Kremlin is as extreme as it is kitsch. Sitting far from foreign visitors may … Read More
Apr 23rd 2022 I N AUGUST 2018 ClientEarth, an environmental organisation based in London, paid €20 ($23) for ten shares in Enea, a power company based in Poland. The transaction … Read More
