Jun 12th 2021

Bunged up: How the green boom could get stuck

The world this week

Leaders

Bunged up

How green bottlenecks threaten the clean energy business

A great green investment boom is under way, but supply-side problems are underappreciated

Inoculation, inoculation, inoculation

The West is passing up the opportunity of the century

There could be no better advertisement for democracy and free markets than a rapid global vaccination drive

Latin America

A failure to reform Peru is poised to produce a lurch to the far left

A presidential run-off election is set to deliver a weak, populist government

A new architecture

A less loophole-riddled system for taxing companies is within reach

But governments should not expect a gusher of extra revenue

False positive

America’s approval of an Alzheimer’s drug is premature

It may offer false hope and divert resources from more promising therapies

Letters

On Israel and Palestine, the MOVE, European startups, evictions, Argentina, Yuan Longping, Chinese

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Missing ingredients

The bottlenecks which could constrain emission cuts

The green revolution risks running short of minerals, money and places to build

United States

The reading wars

American schools teach reading all wrong

Lowering the bar

Deportations of undocumented immigrants are at a record low

Plaid shirts and plywood

Portland was once a byword for tattooed vegan microbrewers

Conspiracy as a second language

Hispanic Americans are curious about QAnon too

Dorm norms

The Biden administration wants to change guidelines on campus sexual assault

Lexington

Kyrsten Sinema’s technicolour moderation

The Americas

The man with the straw hat

Pedro Castillo is on the verge of becoming Peru’s president

Clipped wings

Mid-term elections have weakened Mexico’s president

CoronaVac chronicles

A town in Brazil has vaccinated nearly everyone against covid-19

Democratic deficit

President Daniel Ortega clamps down on Nicaragua’s opposition

Asia

Over and out

Can Afghan forces hold off the Taliban after American troops leave?

Push the boat out

An influencer’s rant overshadows an ecological disaster in Sri Lanka

The rule of six

More evidence emerges of India’s true death toll from covid-19

Have a cow, man

Politicians in the Philippines are holding raffles to boost vaccination

Banyan

The Quad is finding its purpose, at last

China

Who watches the watchmen?

The anti-graft unit of China’s Communist Party has grown in power

Build big, show little

China says it will be a “museum power” by 2035

Chaguan

Foreigners rush inside the Great Wall

Middle East & Africa

The rise of Raisi

Iran has rigged its election to favour Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner

An industry in pieces

Why are Morocco’s famed artisans paving roads in the desert?

Go west, habibi

Lebanese move to west Africa, escaping the crisis at home

Do not rinse and retweet

Nigeria’s Twitter ban prompts ridicule—and fear

Turning over a new leaf

Mauritania may be changing for the better

Hunger as a weapon

Facing famine in Tigray

Europe

Summit season

With Donald Trump gone, NATO is plotting its future

Found at sea

Britain and France send their aircraft-carriers out together

Transgender rights

Continental Europe enters the gender wars

Party lines

Europe’s drug habit proves immune to covid-19

How green is my Draghi?

Italy has a tough task ahead on climate change

Charlemagne

The many faces of Sebastian Kurz

Britain

The job market

Low-paid Britons are at the heart of the post-pandemic recovery

A rural transformation

Why farms are moving into solar energy, campsites and natural burials

Gilt-y pleasure

As political risk fades, British government debt is back in vogue

Green gold

How Sinn Fein, the political successors to the IRA, became so rich

Chained to the desk

The British government is turning children’s prisons into schools

Trouble in Tory town?

Liberal Democrats hope for a revival in England’s commuter belt

Dirty pretty things

Historic Bath’s struggle to be both green and pleasant

Bagehot

A new version of Essex man is born in the north

International

What’s the Japanese for QAnon?

Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

Business

Less for more

How America Inc is coping with rising inflation

Boom time

Will commercial jets break the sound barrier once again?

Booster shot

Covid-19 has given South Korea’s biotech firms a shot in the arm

Dealing with abundance

Does the Medline mega-deal herald the return of giant buyouts?

New rules of the road

Google settles with French trustbusters

Bartleby

Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

Schumpeter

Activist investors are both greening and greying

Finance & economics

Chasing pots of gold

Foreign asset managers are eyeing China’s vast pool of savings

Paid in China

Soaring factory prices in China add to global inflation fears

Vacancies in the Village

Will empty shopfronts revive as New York comes back to life?

Beating bitcoin

Cryptocoins are proliferating wildly. What are they all for?

Buttonwood

Why the market for secondhand private-equity stakes is thriving

Free exchange

Slow jobs growth may not be a bad sign for America’s recovery

Science & technology

A flicker of light

America’s wary approval of an Alzheimer’s drug offers hope to millions

Nuclear power

A firm founded by Bill Gates bets on a novel nuclear reactor

Wildlife conservation

Laysan albatross have only two main nesting sites

Mass extinctions

Some 19m years ago the world’s sharks almost disappeared

Space cadets

Jeff Bezos’s flight of fancy

A cool idea

Quantum weirdness helps design better accelerometers

Books & arts

The arts after the pandemic

As curtains rise again, the theatre is set to look very different

Art and activism in Poland

Daniel Rycharski builds bridges with art

Double standard

The entwined histories of guns and race in America

Tech fiction

Digital dreams and disappointments in “The Startup Wife”

Fact and imagination

The trouble with the past

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

House of unrepresentatives

How the Voting Rights Act limits gerrymanders

Obituary

Tales of love and death