Apr 15th 2023

Riding high: The lessons of America’s astonishing economy

The world this week

Leaders

Riding high

The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

The world’s biggest economy is leaving its peers ever further in the dust

Non-alignment

Can the West win over the rest?

In a more transactional world the price of influence is going up

Europe, China and America

Emmanuel Macron’s blunder over Taiwan

The French leader has made a dangerous situation worse

Addiction

Oregon botches the decriminalisation of drugs

It failed to prepare the ground

Big science

The Human Genome Project transformed biology

Yet for genomics to become a part of everyday medicine, the hard work is still ahead

Letters

On China and Ukraine, George Orwell, science and religion, video games, “Barbie”, height

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Russia and Ukraine

Jonathan Powell on preparations for peace-making in Ukraine

The Pentagon leaks

Intelligence leaks are an opportunity as well as a threat, says Thomas Rid

Briefing

From strength to strength

America’s economic outperformance is a marvel to behold

But the country could still undercut its own success

United States

The slides that came in from the cold

A leak of files is one of America’s worst intelligence breaches in a decade

The Oregon experiment

Oregon’s drug decriminalisation has had a troubled start

Perverse political maths

Why Tim Scott is such a long shot for the Republican nomination

Mifepristone muddle

A federal judge in Texas rules against a popular abortion medication

Third-rail thriller

America’s entitlement programmes are rapidly approaching insolvency

Lexington

The real questions raised by Clarence Thomas’s latest scandal

The Americas

Back in the big league

Brazil’s foreign policy is hyperactive, ambitious and naive

Losing its sheen

Uruguay is losing its reputation as Latin America’s success story

Total chaos

An ambitious plan for “total peace” in Colombia is faltering

Asia

Putting the Indo into Indo-Pacific

Rivalry between America and China has spread to the Indian Ocean

Boba life

Chinese bubble tea chains go viral in South-East Asia

Kishida in the clear

Japan’s prime minister has recovered from a rough patch

Banyan

Narendra Modi is rewriting Indian history

China

Knives out

Communist Party members must study Xi Jinping’s thinking

What passes for justice

China throws the book at two prominent human-rights lawyers

Moderate exercises

What to make of China’s military drills around Taiwan

Middle East & Africa

Israel and the Palestinians

The Palestinian Authority is being eclipsed by radical militants

Of militants and money-changers

Egypt’s army seems to want to make pasta as well as war

Missing people

Many thousands of Africans have disappeared in conflict

All right for some

Why Africa is one of the most unequal continents in the world

Europe

A changing continent

The woman at the heart of Europe

The ground beneath his feet

Recovery from Turkey’s earthquake will take years

Not waterproof

A winter drought grips southern Europe

Charlemagne

How Europe is spluttering its way to better air quality

Britain

Tax brakes

Britain’s tax take is getting bigger but not better

Talk talk

Private therapy in Britain is booming and largely unregulated

Vertical limits

Can high-rise buildings solve London’s housing problems?

Weight of history

How intrepid Victorian surveyors mapped the length and breadth of Britain

Bagehot

Rishi Sunak, a very Tory kind of technocrat

International

The new non-aligned

How to survive a superpower split

Business

Welcome to the green swamp

America’s $800bn climate splurge is feeding a new lobbying ecosystem

Nickel and dimes

Indonesia’s nickel boom tests Western green sensibilities

ByteDance the night away

ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent, reports a record profit

Yes, they can (and box, and package)

Inflation has yet to dent big food’s earnings

To build or to buy?

The tug-of-war between Glencore and Teck

Bartleby

How to be a superstar on Zoom

Schumpeter

Samsung should be wary of Intel-like complacency

Finance & economics

Sovereign-stealth funds

Welcome to a new era of petrodollar power

28 years later

After decades of stagnation, wages in Japan are finally rising

Grievance culture

Where did woke ideas start to spread?

The big squeeze

Life is getting tough for borrowers. Where will the pain be felt?

High-stake cards

More and more Americans are gaming the deposit-insurance system

Buttonwood

What luxury stocks say about the new cold war

Free exchange

How the state could take control of the banking system

Science & technology

The Human Genome Project

How the Human Genome Project revolutionised biology

Culture

Walking on water

Bangladesh’s riverine villages are benefiting from clever design

Bugs in the system

The role of bacteria and viruses in world history

Home Entertainment

Sarah Bernhardt was the first modern celebrity

Horror on the high seas

A thrilling account of a shipwreck in the Pacific in 1741

Common denominators

Paying attention to numbers can open up meaning in books

Johnson

A new language textbook in Mexico has caused a brouhaha

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Food and climate change

A different way to measure the climate impact of food

The Economist explains

The Economist explains

Why so many Russian tanks fall prey to Ukrainian mines

The Economist explains

How to measure poverty

Obituary

Germany’s conscience