Category: economy

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

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 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

Dec 29th 2021 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

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

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

Oct 25th 2020 SOMETIME AROUND the middle of the 19th century, Maria Sutton Clemments worked as a slave on an Arkansas cotton plantation. Years later she remembered one typically vicious … Read More

Oct 28th 2020 NEW YORK, SÃO PAULO AND SINGAPORE WHEN KAMPALA went into covid-19 lockdown, singletons in the Ugandan capital were looking for “lockdown partners”, says Allan Creed, who works … Read More

HAIRPORT, A BARBER SHOP, could be anywhere in the world. A smart logo on its doors shows a pirate in a tricorn, flanked by crossbone-style scissors. Giant photos of tattooed … Read More

Nov 8th 2020 ON A RAINY day in central London in April 2008, Laurence Lee, then a presenter for Al Jazeera, a broadcaster, told viewers that that year’s Olympics in … Read More

Nov 11th 2020 EDTECH HAS never quite fulfilled its promise to galvanise poorly performing school systems. Past investments in educational technology often failed because of badly specified hardware and clunky … Read More

Nov 14th 2020 BEIRUT, BRUSSELS, PARIS, SÃO PAULO AND TOKYO ON THE MORNING after the polls closed last week, America withdrew from the Paris agreement on climate change. The effects … Read More

Nov 17th 2020 AMERICAN AIRCRAFT-CARRIERS have not always been welcome in the Indian Ocean. In 1971, during a war between India and Pakistan, America sailed the USS Enterprise into the … 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

Nov 21st 2020 CHICAGO AND SÃO PAULO Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our … Read More

Nov 25th 2020 SÃO PAULO AND SEOUL “MY BROTHER THINKS I’m crazy,” says Márcia Ramos, a 53-year-old from Rio de Janeiro. After losing a job in sales a few years … Read More

Dec 1st 2020 EACH YEAR the United Nations puts out a carefully crafted state-of-the-world assessment from a humanitarian perspective. It considers how much help is needed to stave off disaster … Read More

Dec 5th 2020 Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our … Read More

Dec 7th 2020 WHEN MILLIONS of migrant workers were forced by India’s sudden covid lockdown to return to their villages from the cities where they worked, many feared destitution. But … Read More

IF ANYONE HAS a good excuse for being a few minutes late to an interview, it is Ugur Sahin. As the world anxiously monitors the spread of Omicron, the newest … 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 12th 2020 IN 2018 ANDREA DAVIDSON’S 12-year-old daughter, Meghan, announced she was “definitely a boy”. Ms Davidson says her child was never a tomboy but the family doctor congratulated … Read More

Dec 13th 2020 IT WAS MEANT to be a marathon day in which all governments promised new, bigger, better efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and rich nations offered more financial … Read More

Dec 14th 2020 “A DEBT THAT we owe to the global community” is how Santiago Wills, Colombia’s ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, described the talks he … Read More

Dec 19th 2020 KAMPALA, LUSAKA, MUMBAI, SÃO PAULO AND YANGON Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more … Read More

Dec 22nd 2020 AS 2019 DREW to a close, the virus that was later to be called SARS-CoV-2 burst out of stealth mode. On December 26th Zhang Jixian, a doctor … Read More

Jan 2nd 2021 THE BALDING figure looks frail and harmless, sitting in the dock behind a Perspex screen in the German town of Koblenz, where the rivers Rhine and Moselle … Read More

Jan 9th 2021 LYING DRUNK in a field outside the Austrian city of Innsbruck in 1971, inspiration struck Douglas Adams, a science-fiction writer. He looked at his copy of “The … Read More

Jan 9th 2021 FOR THE many regimes around the world that resent being lectured by America about human rights and democracy, the overrunning of the Capitol by rioters on January … Read More

Jan 10th 2021 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 … Read More

Jan 16th 2021 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 … Read More

Jan 16th 2021 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 … Read More

Jan 23rd 2021 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 … 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

Jan 31st 2021 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: … Read More

Feb 4th 2021 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 … 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

Feb 11th 2021 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 … Read More

Feb 20th 2021 Rome, São Paulo and Singapore IT HAS BEEN 11 months since anyone hugged Larry. The 62-year-old accountant lives alone in Chicago, which went into lockdown last March … Read More

Feb 22nd 2021 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 … Read More

Feb 28th 2021 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 … 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

Mar 1st 2021 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 … Read More

Mar 3rd 2021 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 … 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

Mar 11th 2021 DAKAR, LUWERO, MOMBASA AND MWESO “I DID NOT get pregnant by choice,” says Annunciata, a mother of eight in Mweso, eastern Congo. Her husband often raped her. … 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

Mar 20th 2021 São Paulo and Seoul 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 … Read More

Mar 21st 2021 MADRID AND MUBAMBIRO 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 … Read More

Mar 27th 2021 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 … Read More

Mar 31st 2021 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 … Read More

Apr 7th 2021 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 … Read More

Apr 10th 2021 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 … 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

Apr 15th 2021 LUSAKA AND NAIROBI 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 … Read More

Apr 24th 2021 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, … Read More

Apr 27th 2021 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 … Read More

Apr 29th 2021 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 … Read More

May 6th 2021 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 … Read More

May 13th 2021 JOHANNESBURG AND PARIS 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, … Read More

May 22nd 2021 BERLIN AND SEOUL “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 … 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

May 29th 2021 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 … Read More

Jun 5th 2021 WASHINGTON, DC 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 … Read More

Jun 5th 2021 THANKS ESPECIALLY to ubiquitous camera-phones, today’s wars have been filmed more than any in history. Consider the growing archives of Mnemonic, a Berlin charity that preserves video … Read More

Jun 12th 2021 BOSTON AND SÃO PAULO ARTHUR DO VAL just wanted to be somebody. A sitting lawmaker in São Paulo’s regional assembly—with, as he boasts in his Twitter bio, … Read More

Jun 12th 2021 JOE BIDEN believes that America and its rich allies must offer poor countries an attractive alternative to Chinese loans and investment. It is not enough, he thinks, … Read More

Jun 17th 2021 Cañada Real and Kibera WINNIE MUHONJA has faced many difficulties in her life. Covid-19 is just the latest. Having grown up in Kibera, a huge slum with … 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

Jun 24th 2021 IN EARLY JUNE Britain’s long-suffering Europhiles got a rare taste of Schadenfreude. Tim Martin, a forthright Brexiteer who is the boss of J.D. Wetherspoon, a chain of … Read More

Jul 1st 2021 “THE NUMBER of people who are in a new size is pretty staggering,” Chip Bergh, the head of Levi Strauss, admitted in June. After more than a … Read More

Jul 6th 2021 BATON ROUGE AND LILONGWE LAST AUGUST a judge sentenced Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, to life in prison with no possibility … Read More

Jul 17th 2021 ON JULY 11th, climbing through the darkling sky like a bolt of lightning in reverse, Richard Branson stole a whisper of Jeff Bezos’s thunder. Listen to this … Read More

Jul 21st 2021 EARLIER THIS month wildfires tore through the drought-stricken American West. The largest of them, the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, now takes up almost 395,000 hectares—more than … Read More

Jul 24th 2021 IN 2014 A GERMAN animal-rights group called SOKO Tierschutz planted a caretaker in the laboratory of Nikos Logothetis, a neuroscientist working at the Max Planck Institute in … Read More

Jul 31st 2021 Bogotá, Durban, São Paulo and Singapore A PILE OF fake corpses littered the heart of Bangkok. The bodies—white sacks stuffed with hay and spattered with red paint—symbolised … Read More

Aug 5th 2021 ATHENS, AYVALIK AND TIJUANA WHEN THE Turkish coastguard found them in the Aegean in the dead of night, they had been adrift for three hours. The air … Read More

Aug 14th 2021 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 … Read More

Aug 21st 2021 “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 … 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

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

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

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

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

WHEN BORIS JOHNSON, Britain’s prime minister, reappeared at COP26 on November 10th, he glibly told reporters: “I don’t see why we shouldn’t go into extra time if we have to.” … 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

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

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