Feb 10th 2022

When the ride ends

The world this week

Leaders

The next crisis

What would happen if financial markets crashed?

Look to history for a guide, but know that next time will be different

Minsky moment

Diplomacy has created an opening for detente in Ukraine, but beware a trap

Russia is invoking the Minsk agreement to sow chaos, not to bring peace

Green investors’ filthy secret

The truth about dirty assets

Polluting businesses are moving into the financial shadows

Festive but fraying

India’s democracy is not as healthy as this month’s elections make it seem

It is not just sectarianism that is ailing the body politic

Radical research

Some lessons on inventing the future in Britain

How to make the country’s new innovation agency work

Letters

On Ukraine’s gas pipelines, the Cuban missile crisis, George McGovern, Bangladesh, police alternatives, culture, Boris Johnson

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Local, but vast

The elections in Uttar Pradesh will show where India is heading

Can Narendra Modi’s BJP recreate its successes of the 2010s?

United States

Congressional redistricting

Democrats have fared surprisingly well in Congress’s new maps

Another exodus?

Rival Jewish congregations feud over America’s oldest synagogue

TikTok nuns

A group of nuns goes viral for Jesus

Party loyalties

Is Donald Trump losing his grip on Republican voters?

Street food

Roadkill is now on the menu in Wyoming

Carjacking

What the carjacking wave says about American policing

Lexington

Messing up, Biden-style

The Americas

A lopsided romance

Despite thriving trade, China’s relationship with Brazil is weakening

A deadly profession

Four journalists have been killed in Mexico this year

Bello

How the “Cannibal Manifesto” changed Brazil

Asia

The ailing body politic

The organs of India’s democracy are decaying

Sidewalk ballet

Bangkok is trying to evict its street hawkers

Quarter-acre heartbreaker

New Zealand’s housing crisis is worsening

Blood feuds

The outcome of the Philippines’ election is not as certain as it looks

Explosive growth

South Korea wants to become one of the world’s biggest arms exporters

Banyan

Kishida Fumio’s “new capitalism” is many things, but it is not new

China

Thinker-in-chief

Wang Huning’s career reveals much about political change in China

Injecting urgency

Hong Kong’s old folk remain largely unvaccinated

Chaguan

The good and the bad of China on Olympic show

Middle East & Africa

America and Iran

Nuclear talks with Iran enter the endgame

The surveillance state

Did the police in Israel use Pegasus spyware on citizens?

Back with a bump

More African countries are letting pregnant girls stay at school

Older and less wise

The African Union is less effective at 20 than it was at two

Europe

The chancellor wakes

A beleaguered Olaf Scholz launches a diplomatic offensive

Shaky state

Bosnia is on the brink of falling apart again

The few, the proud

Spain’s empty middle flexes its political muscles

Drones of their own

Turkey is the arms industry’s new upstart

All the boys and girls

In France’s election young people are all over the map

Charlemagne

A European bunfight breaks out over food labels

Britain

Law and order

London’s Metropolitan Police Service is failing on three fronts

Dashed promises

Northern Irish devolution collapses—again

Bare necessities

Britain’s cost-of-living squeeze in four charts

Taming the circus

Boris Johnson attempts to get his government back under control

Hualong, farewell

British regulators have approved a Chinese reactor design

Justice delayed

Unless lawyers are paid better, courts will grind to a halt

Bagehot

The rise of unpopulism

International

Crisis in Ukraine

How Russia has revived NATO

Business

To the victors, the scraps

Disney, Netflix, Apple: is anyone winning the streaming wars?

Industrial technology

Why Japan’s Automation Inc is indispensable to global industry

Fabs with benefits

In the global chips arms race, Europe makes its move

Income support

How long can America Inc’s profits keep rising?

Slumber party

The sleep-tech industry is waking up

Bartleby

Rio Tinto and the problem of toxic culture

Schumpeter

As its sale of Arm collapses, the tide is turning against SoftBank

Finance & economics

What goes up?

Is the modern, bank-light financial system better than the old one?

Fossil hunters

Who buys the dirty energy assets public companies no longer want?

Buttonwood

How unlisted startups’ valuations will adjust to falling share prices

Rice restraint

Asia is not feeling the same price pressures as the West

How to default on China

China does not always collect its debts on time

Free exchange

The promise of former eastern-bloc economies is mostly unfulfilled

Science & technology

The bots in the warehouse

New robots—smarter and faster—are taking over warehouses

Sidewalk bots

Sidewalk robots are already busy delivering groceries

Deafened

Plants are adversely affected by the racket of urban traffic

Standing ovation

Spinal implants allow the paralysed to walk, swim and cycle again

Culture

Au revoir tristesse

The strange tenderness of Michel Houellebecq’s new novel

China’s other dreams

To understand China, says Megan Walsh, turn to its literature

Heart in mouth

Rachel Jones is an artist of the moment

Insurgent history

How do radicals find each other—and get heard?

Home Entertainment

“Columbo” shows the benefits of asking just one more thing

Johnson

A language without a flag and a state is still a language

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Olympian judgments

How to detect nationalism in winter-sport judges

Obituary

India’s nightingale