Jun 20th 2020

The genius of Amazon

The world this week

Leaders

Politics and the pandemic

Britain has the wrong government for the covid crisis

It has played a bad hand badly

Geopolitics

The new world disorder

If America pulls back from global institutions, other powers must step forward

Elephant v dragon

How to end the perilous Indo-Chinese border spat

To avoid escalation, both sides should agree on the “Line of Actual Control”

The trouble with climate finance

Green investing has shortcomings

The financial system and climate change

Sailors are stranded at sea

Cargo-ship crews are stuck at sea

A crewing crisis

The genius of Amazon

The pandemic has shown that Amazon is essential—but vulnerable

Jeff Bezos’s vision of a world shopping online is coming true faster than ever. But the job of running Amazon hasn’t got any easier

Letters

On prosecutors, the media, mercenaries, Greek, carbon pricing, the Bible, Andrew Johnson

Letters to the editor

Briefing

And on the second day...

Can Amazon keep growing like a youthful startup?

Investors certainly seem to think so

Hotting up

How much can financiers do about climate change?

The role that green investing can play must not be misunderstood or overstated

United States

The pandemic and state finances

The state-budget train crash

LGBT rights

America’s Supreme Court protects LGBT workers against discrimination

Midwives wanted

The pandemic is making America rethink its shunning of midwifery

National security chastiser

Details from John Bolton’s book are damning for Donald Trump

How’s he doin’?

New Yorkers turn their backs on Bill de Blasio

The Maine Senate race

The bid to unseat the last New England Republican in Congress

Growing your own food

America rediscovers the joys of vegetable-growing

The Americas

Leaving lockdowns

Latin America opens up before it’s ready

Standing apart

How Uruguay has coped with covid-19

Bello

A gringo takeover bid for the Inter-American Development Bank

Asia

Death valley

India and China have their first deadly clashes in 45 years

Manners maketh district commissioners

In the bureaucracies of Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Raj lives on

Breathing room

Singapore promises roomier digs for migrant workers

Fighting mockery with munitions

North Korea blows up the South’s de facto embassy

Banyan

Racism in Australia is not just a thing of the past

China

Identify yourself

China’s next move in the South China Sea

It’s back

An outbreak in Beijing of covid-19 is causing alarm

Chaguan

Why China bullies

Middle East & Africa

Testing times

African countries are struggling to keep track of covid-19

Wigged men v Big Man

A court in Malawi tries to guarantee a fair election

More than a game

How winning big football matches promotes peace

A tax on all your houses

A mayor is reforming Sierra Leone’s rotten property tax

From bad to worse

Bashar al-Assad has no solutions to Syria’s crisis

Europe

Playing the family card

Gay “ideology” is worse than communism, says Poland’s president

Miffed in Minsk

Waving slippers at the “cockroach” president of Belarus

Why furlough works

Germany spends big to save jobs

Townies v tractors

French urbanites fuss about rustic noises and smells

Charlemagne

How a dining club briefly took over the EU

Britain

An unfortunate case study

The British state shows how not to respond to a pandemic

Drug discovery

Dexamethasone cuts covid-19 deaths

Anti-racism protest

What next for Black Lives Matter UK?

A Boris bombshell in Whitehall

British diplomats and donors are told to merge

Shopping is back

Britain’s bookshops reopen

Bagehot

Boris Johnson loses his grip

International

Horsemen of the apocalypse

Covid-19 raises the risks of violent conflict

Special report

The new world disorder

Global leadership is missing in action

Power plays

Who runs the world?

Global firefighting

The UN has too much on its plate

New START’s end?

The clock is ticking for nuclear arms control

Reflections at 75

The UN is mobilising for the next quarter-century

Reform

The UN’s structures built in 1945 are not fit for 2020, let alone beyond it

Time to rediscover statesmanship

Three future scenarios for the UN

Business

Fashion victims

How slow times in the luxury world will separate the bling from the chaff

Beyond the pale

Will Silicon Valley face up to its diversity problem?

Bartleby

Waging war on recessions

Much ado about Samsung

No end in sight for Samsung’s legal troubles

Chopped and screwed

Why corporate disputes in China still revolve around rubber stamps

The Reimann hypothesis

A peek inside JAB Holding

Schumpeter

Can Zoom be trusted with users’ secrets?

Finance & economics

From yields to maturity

The Fed has been supporting markets. Now it must find ways to boost growth

Swapping panic for calm

The successes of the Fed’s dollar-swap lines

Clarifying the battle lines

China’s poverty line is not as stingy as commentators think

Better tailored

The euro area’s stimulus is less stingy than in past crises

Forty acres and a mule

The economics of reparations

Buttonwood

To understand the new wave of small investors, look to China

Ninety percent of everything

As the virus rages on shore, merchant seamen are stranded on board

Free exchange

New research casts light on the pandemic’s effects on resource allocation

Science & technology

A floating Arctic laboratory

An icebreaker called Polarstern is revealing the Arctic’s secrets

Books & arts

Too many setbacks

A historian sets out to explain Spain’s tumultuous past

Goths v Romans

A brilliant Goth’s-eye view of the sack of Rome

Opening the black box

Alfredo Jaar makes art from the news

Home Entertainment

“The Prisoner”, a classic TV series, is apt lockdown viewing

Home Entertainment

Time to climb “The Magic Mountain”

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Mapping conflict in west Africa

Fighting in the Sahel has forced 1.7m people from their homes

Obituary

The lark of metro Barbès