Sep 4th 2021

The threat from the illiberal left

The world this week

Leaders

Political thought

The threat from the illiberal left

Don’t underestimate the danger of left-leaning identity politics

Do not move on, move forwards

America should engage with the Taliban, very cautiously

The aim should be to help ordinary Afghans, not to compete with China and Iran

Delta and the world economy

How the pandemic became stagflationary

As the virus has changed, so has its relationship to the economy

China’s bad debts

China’s dodgy-debt double act

The agonies of Huarong and Evergrande

Poor and parched

Why Madagascar is going hungry

Climate change, covid-19 and bad governance all play a role

Letters

On Afghanistan, vaccinations, chewing-gum, Berlin, corporate jargon

Letters to the editor

Briefing

The illiberal left

How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

And how deep will its influence be?

Imposing orthodoxy

Left-wing activists are using old tactics in a new assault on liberalism

It is possible to detect eerie echoes of the confessional state of yore

United States

Fallout from the flight

How damaging has the Afghanistan withdrawal been to Joe Biden?

Roe on the ropes

The Supreme Court green-lights a near-total abortion ban in Texas

Wauthorisation

Will America’s next war be declared by Congress or the president?

Star power

Rural Colorado hopes to cash in on its dark skies

The woking class

American philanthropy turns left

Lexington

Storms and fires will not bring an escape from America’s stuck climate politics

The Americas

Machiavellian manoeuvres

Nicolás Maduro’s regime and the Venezuelan opposition meet in Mexico

A cuddlier Conservatism

Could Canada’s Conservative Party win back power?

Asia

After the airlift

Foreign powers ponder how and whether to engage with the Taliban

Cutting Kabul’s cable

Afghanistan’s thriving television channels prepare for a crackdown

Perverse outcomes

Criminalising sex work does more harm than good

Lessons learnt

Yale-NUS, Singapore’s first liberal-arts college, closes its doors

Banyan

Suga Yoshihide falls on his sword

China

Red lines, grey rhinos and big mountains

China’s bid to stabilise its property market is causing jitters

Squeezing out the carbon

America wants China to end support for coal projects abroad

Chaguan

Xi Jinping Thought, for children

Middle East & Africa

Hunger island

Madagascar is on the brink of famine

Reform, and its malcontents

What the travails of a reformist governor say about Nigeria

Managing the conflict

Israel’s foreign policy has changed in tone but not in substance

Bulldozing history

Arab states are wrecking old treasures

Europe

Get them while they’re young

Vladimir Putin’s henchmen target Russia’s universities and students

It’s complicated

German voters face a bewildering array of possible coalitions

A tale of two pubs

Germany’s election, seen through the bottom of a glass

Too many boys

The rise and fall of sex-selective abortion in Georgia

Stranded in no-man’s-land

Europe’s latest migrant crisis leaves refugees stuck between two borders

Charlemagne

After Afghanistan, Europe wonders if France was right about America

Britain

Out of stock

Britain’s economic recovery from the pandemic is far from smooth

Tied up in knots

For Northern Ireland, Brexit means red tape and subsidies

GBPR

The coming Brexit row over data

Back to basics

School closures have caused damage that extra lessons cannot fix

Going nowhere

Neither Nicola Sturgeon nor the SNP will be easy to dislodge

Spin doctors

The extraordinary power of the NHS brand

Bagehot

Britain’s foreign secretary isn’t up to the job

International

It’s all connected, man

From Congo to the Capitol, conspiracy theories are surging

Business

Update your calendar

The future of meetings

The Oracle of AI

Flush with billions, Databricks has momentum and big plans

Can Rivian deliver?

An electric-vehicle startup aims for a stellar valuation

China’s gaming crackdown

China imposes the world’s strictest limits on video games

Theatre of blood

The trial of Elizabeth Holmes gets under way

Bartleby

Why people are always so gloomy about the world of work

Schumpeter

In the metaverse, will big gaming eventually become big tech?

Finance & economics

The special sauce

The economy that covid-19 could not stop

Can they build it?

Labour shortages threaten housing supply

Satoshis for cervezas

Using bitcoin as legal tender

Hot take

Could climate change trigger a financial crisis?

Buttonwood

Sustainable investing faces the beginnings of a backlash

Free exchange

At the Jackson Hole meeting, the Fed ponders an uneven recovery

We're hiring

Wanted: a new economics writer

Schools brief

Biology brief

Finding living planets

Science & technology

AI for vehicles

Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

Hummingbird cross-dressers

Some female hummingbirds have evolved to look like males

Scientific errors

Software is subbing mistakes into scientific papers

Books & arts

Cuban history

America looms large in a new history of Cuba

Liberalism and the truth

Jonathan Rauch defends “the constitution of knowledge”

Johnson

The best and worst ways to tackle linguistic sexism

Israeli fiction

A family grapples with its past in David Grossman’s new novel

Keys to all knowledge

How the index changed reading, for better and worse

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

We were expecting you

Poorly devised regulation lets firms pollute with abandon

Obituary

Blood and roses