Sep 9th 2021

9/11: America then and now

The world this week

Leaders

America and the world

The real lessons from 9/11

America risks swinging from hubris to muddle

Sex and geopolitics

Why nations that fail women fail

And why foreign policy should pay more heed to half of humanity

Age and enlightenment

Boris Johnson deserves credit for reforming Britain’s social care

But national insurance is the wrong way to pay for it

Courting trouble

Texas’s bounty-hunting abortion law could remain on the books for a long time

This is bad for women, the Supreme Court and the rule of law

New ideas, old tricks

Nayib Bukele is wrecking democracy in El Salvador

Beyond the bitcoin tech-bro hype is an old-fashioned caudillo

Letters

On Turkey and the EU, Afghanistan, Kazakhstanis, executives, dudes

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Ashes from ashes

How America wasted its unipolar moment

The war on terror improved neither the nation’s standing nor the nation itself

United States

Renaissance town

How, after 9/11, New York built back better

Roads back to Roe

The fight for abortion rights in Texas is far from over

Not moving the needle

In America, even full local hospitals do not dent vaccine scepticism

Released

How asbestos saved the Sackler family from bankruptcy

Nuns and nones

Religious orders are teaming up with agnostic Americans

Imperfect recall

The recall election in California

Lexington

Being demonised has not stopped American Muslims’ impressive rise

The Americas

A populist pushes back

Jair Bolsonaro fires up his fans by attacking judges

Judges for choice

Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalises abortion

Crypto creep

El Salvador’s bitcoin bro president is beloved and dangerous

Asia

The shoe drops

What the Delta variant did to South-East Asia

Face: the facts

A big study in Bangladesh finds simple ways to encourage mask use

Hell-care providers

What use is a vaccine when you’re dead? Plenty

Empty clinics, hungry lions

The Taliban get down to the tedious business of running a country

September surprise

Suga Yoshihide’s resignation heralds an era of uncertainty for Japan

Banyan

India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

China

Codified crackdown

China has become a laboratory for the regulation of digital technology

Talkin’ ‘bout a revolution

A provocative blog post stirs up a firestorm in China

Chaguan

A new book looks behind Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign

Middle East & Africa

Another one bites the dust

Alpha Condé, the president of Guinea, is ousted in a coup

Roots and all

Zionism, southern Africa’s most popular religious movement, is evolving

Mega-country, micro-pensions

Nigeria is struggling to get informal workers to save

Not management material

Iranians worry that their new government is inept

The Taliban-whisperers

Qatar’s unique role in Afghanistan

Europe

Still searching

After Afghanistan Germans rethink their country’s foreign policy

Gloom and grumbling

Germany’s Christian Democrats contemplate defeat

Grappling with a Rubik’s cube

Talks about the Catalan conflict are about to start

Charlemagne

Why EU-watching is like astrology

Britain

Tax and spend

Boris Johnson at last grasps the nettle of social-care reform

Streets and bricks

How a modernist architect won over traditionalists

Grey radicals

Older voters help power Britain’s radical movements

Lights, camera, tax breaks

Britain’s film industry is booming

Sleazy does it

Repeated scandals have failed to dent the government’s popularity

Go forth and multiply more

The Church of England needs new members. How to get them?

Bagehot

Britain’s most powerful Corbynista is making his mark

International

The cost of misogyny

Societies that treat women badly are poorer and less stable

Business

Gelsinger’s opening gambit

Intel’s turnaround and the future of chipmaking

Baghdad pay dirt

TotalEnergies and Iraq agree to a $27bn deal

Cable ties

As Americans cut the cord, Europeans sign up for more pay-TV

DAX redux

Germany’s DAX blue-chip stockmarket index gets an update

The direct approach

Direct-to-consumer retailers try to bring pizzazz to dull goods

Bartleby

The pandemic has refashioned corporate dress codes

Schumpeter

The “Google of genomics” meets the techbashers of antitrust

Finance & economics

The cracked egg

The new economics of global cities

On the up

A coup in Guinea adds fuel to aluminium’s red-hot rally

Home comforts

China turns to new stock exchanges to channel finance to innovative firms

Raiding the stakes

Goldman Sachs taps public markets to bet on private equity

High-wire act

In much of the world, economic policy is becoming tighter

Buttonwood

Do physical assets offer investors refuge from inflation?

Free exchange

How to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs

Science & technology

The other pandemic

A new AIDS vaccine heads to clinical trials

A calculated risk

Why scientists are deliberately infecting volunteers with covid-19

Climate change and evolution

The effects of a warmer world are visible in animals’ bodies

Two close shaves

How the kakapo beat the genetic odds

Hybrid vigour

A new form of sea defence is part natural, part artificial

Books & arts

The home front

Two books assess the impact of September 11th on America

Tectonic plates

The forgotten revolution of Josiah Wedgwood’s pottery

Antiquities and the law

A case in Germany has big implications for the antiquities trade

The trouble with normality

Sally Rooney returns with “Beautiful World, Where Are You”

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

All too human

Pressure-driven meltdowns are surprisingly common in elite tennis

Obituary

Hearing the voices