Apr 24th 2021

Putin’s next move

The world this week

Leaders

Putin’s next move

Russia’s president menaces his people and neighbours

The West should raise the cost of his malign behaviour

Covid catastrophe

India’s giant second wave is a disaster for it and the world

The government’s distraction and complacency have amplified the surge

September showdown

At last, German voters will get a proper choice in a national election

The ruling Christian Democrats and the Greens offer distinct visions and contrasting personalities

Frenzy with benefits

Making sense of the SPAC spectacle

How to snatch sanity from the jaws of financial absurdity

The false promise of stability

The death of Chad’s leader shakes the West’s attitude towards strongmen

Rebels killed Idriss Déby. His son has illegally taken charge

Letters

On the EU, design bias, Altamira, American English, methane, data, workers

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Something is rotten

Vladimir Putin is growing ever more repressive as he loses support

The Russian president has only one goal: his own survival

Under siege

The Kremlin has isolated Russia’s economy

It has protected the country from shocks but is choking any growth

United States

America’s reset

How Joe Biden is reshaping America’s global role

Emissions impossible

Joe Biden asserts America’s role in the fight against climate change

Two degrees of reparation

Derek Chauvin is found guilty of murder

Blocked

Trans medicine gets entangled in America’s culture wars

Reassessing a would-be president

Walter Mondale, a former vice-president, dies aged 93

Religion in America

America’s largest Protestant denomination considers changing direction

Lexington

Why the European Super League failed

The Americas

A wider welcome

Canada wants to attract more immigrants

Kicking covid

Latin American athletes are jumping the queue for vaccines

Domino effect

Guatemala’s top tribunal comes under pressure

Bello

Cuba’s new leadership will have to deliver results fast

Asia

First as tragedy

India is struggling with a catastrophic second wave

The road show must go on

Why Narendra Modi’s party is pulling out all the stops to win in West Bengal

Ride a tiger, risk being bitten

Pakistan’s religious extremists are holding the government to ransom

Nominal interest

Australia’s colonial names are being replaced by Aboriginal ones

Back to the khanate?

Kyrgyzstan votes for strongman rule

Banyan

Mongolia’s president tries to ban its ruling party

China

Hacking China

China’s domestic surveillance programmes benefit foreign spies

Do no harm

Violence against doctors in China is commonplace

Hong Kong

Leading democrats in Hong Kong are jailed

Chaguan

A collection of Chinese contemporary art falls prey to politics

Middle East & Africa

Doses of scepticism

Africa’s covid-19 vaccination drive is off to a slow start

A dictator dies

Chad’s strongman president, Idriss Déby, is killed by rebels

Papers, please

Old laws and red tape leave thousands stateless in Zimbabwe

PIF, poof

Muhammad bin Salman’s risky bet in Saudi Arabia

Daily disasters

Why Egypt’s trains keep crashing

Europe

Green on black

Germany’s election takes shape

The Brussels effect

The EU wants to become the world’s super-regulator in AI

Mind the gap year

Too many well-educated Finns are missing out on university

Terraced grousing

A pricey rapid-testing programme rings alarms in the Netherlands

Charlemagne

Too much is being expected of Mario Draghi

Britain

Ruling the world

London’s business courts face growing competition

Tech IPOs

Darktrace’s float will test London’s market

Empty halls

British museums have suffered particularly badly during covid-19

Housing

First-time buyers’ problems won’t be solved by 95% mortgages

Housing

When Britain’s Generation Rent retires

Spiking

Scotland’s drug-death crisis is in need of a fix

Bagehot

Boris gives the European Super League the boot

International

Women in war

Female soldiers are changing how armed forces work

Business

They think it’s all over

Europe’s Super League scores a spectacular own goal

The energy transition

Oil supermajors’ mega-bet on natural gas

The robots are coming

UiPath is Europe’s most successful tech export since Spotify

Bartleby

The post-pandemic office etiquette

The non-motor show

Huawei and other non-carmakers invade Auto Shanghai

Lab life

Can Merck’s new boss maintain the drugmaker’s winning streak?

Schumpeter

Amazon and Walmart confront Indian politics

Finance & economics

Handle with care

Sanctions are now a central tool of governments’ foreign policy

Buttonwood

The pitfalls of trading geopolitical risk

Huarongs and rights

The woes of Huarong pose dilemmas for Beijing

Model behaviour

Isaiah Andrews wins the John Bates Clark Medal

The wave v the tantrum

One emerging-market worry gives way to another

Alpha plus

Has Europe’s BlackRock outgrown its pond?

Free exchange

How to think about vaccines and patents in a pandemic

Science & technology

A vaxxing problem

American export controls threaten to hinder global vaccine production

Tropical agriculture

How to save coffee from global warming

An ancient bacterium

A curious survivor from the age of the dinosaurs

Cancer research

Mapping cancer as if it were the universe

Aeronautics on Mars

NASA’s Martian helicopter, Ingenuity, takes off

Books & arts

The rise of the robot critic

And the winner is…who cares?

Local heroes

The trouble with peacekeepers

Innovate to accumulate

How Schumpeter would view the economy today

Johnson

The misguided quest to interpret canine “language”

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Welcome reprieve

Surprisingly, suicide has become rarer during the pandemic

Obituary

Just one big lie