Aug 5th 2017

How to avoid nuclear war with North Korea

The world this week

Leaders

It could happen

How to avoid nuclear war with North Korea

There are no good options to curb Kim Jong Un. But blundering into war would be the worst

American politics

Republicans in Congress should be braver

The bargain they struck with the president is not working for them

Reforming France

Emmanuel Macron must keep his nerve

By promising to nationalise France’s biggest shipyard, France’s president is entering dangerous waters

Third time unlucky

The prime minister’s sacking need not throw Pakistan into chaos

As long as generals, judges and politicians all do their part

Rooms for improvement

How to solve Britain’s housing crisis

The outrageous cost of housing constrains the economy and poisons politics

Letters

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Testing, testing…

How close is North Korea to having a missile that can hit LA?

Closer than was previously thought, and far too close for comfort

Red lines and bad choices

How a nuclear war in Korea could start, and how it might end

Everyone would lose

United States

Mooch is taken, Mooch abides

John Kelly’s impossible job at the White House

Don’t hold your breath

Cutting taxes will not be easy

A painful puzzle

Is pregnancy in America much deadlier than in other rich countries?

POTUS v Harvard

The Department of Justice targets affirmative action

Fox populi

Most Republicans trust the president more than they trust the media

Gangs and immigration

The federal government may inadvertantly be helping MS-13 to recruit

Lexington

A Republican senator revolts

The Americas

A deadly blow to democracy

What comes after a farcical “election” in Venezuela

Round One to the president

Brazil’s congress decides not to put Michel Temer on trial

Entering the morgue

Why English-language newspapers in Latin America are struggling

Bello

Venezuela’s shameless and colossal vote-rigging

Asia

A Nawaz-shaped hole

Who will fill the void left by Pakistan’s sacked prime minister?

Continuity, not stability

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister wins a second term

Hindutva unhindered

How the BJP juggernaut is winning control of Indian states

Narco-consternation

A police raid kills a Filipino mayor and much of his family

China

Shrinking and flexing

Reform of China’s army enters a new phase

Anti-dumping

China tries to keep foreign rubbish out

Middle East & Africa

Kenya’s anxious election

Will violence flare again in Kenya?

Send in the red ants

How developers deal with “hijacked” buildings in Johannesburg

More where “Homeland” came from

Israeli spy shows are conquering the world

Get the gist?

The fertile world of Nigerian patois

Dam bluster

How climate change might affect the Nile

Europe

The punishment continues

America’s new economic sanctions may hurt Russia’s recovery

A day late

America may offer Ukraine weapons to repel Russia

Plugging the gap

Ukrainian immigrants are powering Poland’s economy

We’ll always have Val d’Europe

Disney has built a pseudo-Paris near Paris

Charlemagne

Germany’s election campaign ignores the country’s deeper challenges

Britain

The rise of the homebody

A little-noticed change in Britain’s housing market spells trouble for everybody

March of the YIMBYs

Housing is a growing political problem for the Conservatives

The sucking sound

Businesses are preparing for the worst version of Brexit

Reach for the skyscraper

Foreign investors are still betting on London’s property market

Mind the gap

Universities’ main pension pot faces the biggest deficit of any British fund

The Muslim Glastonbury

Thousands of Ahmadis meet in rural Hampshire

Proxy wars

A distant conflict resonates in Northern Ireland

Positive bonding experiences

Britain is a pioneer when it comes to social-impact bonds

Bagehot

Lessons for Brexit from the invasion of Iraq

International

Jam every day

How and why road-pricing will happen

Business

National treasures

Is Emmanuel Macron serious about privatisation?

Fuzzy signal

Shark Week meets Worst Cooks in America

Belt up

Western firms are coining it along China’s One Belt, One Road

Pharma frenemies

A rush for immunotherapy cancer drugs means new bedfellows

Le long layoff

Europe’s no business as usual summer

Schumpeter

Hong Kong, the global capital of hustle, is gripped by self doubt

Finance & economics

When the news gets better

How crisis-hit economies become investment darlings

Buttonwood

Why national accounts might be like corporate balance-sheets

Secondary education

The private-equity business learns to be more flexible

LIBOR pains

A crucial interest-rate benchmark faces a murky future

Knives and forks

Bitcoin divides to rule

The gene is out of the bottle

Genetic testing threatens the insurance industry

Schools brief

Six big ideas

Gary Becker’s concept of human capital

Science & technology

Genetic engineering

Researchers get better at tweaking the genomes of human embryos

Holography

A better way to make holograms

Preserving rare species

A wild idea about paying for conservation

Books & arts

At the hand of man

Why extinctions aren’t what they used to be

A wordsmith in the making

Fiona Mozley is a rising star of British fiction

How to spend it

Modern American elites have come to favour inconspicuous consumption

Johnson

The complex linguistic universe of “Game of Thrones”

Economic & financial indicators

Output, prices and jobs

Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates

The Economist commodity-price index

Manufacturing activity

Markets

Obituary

Singing the land