Jan 20th 2024

Modi’s juggernaut

The world this week

Leaders

Chaos—or opportunity?

Donald Trump is winning. Business, beware

What a second term would mean for American business and the economy

Hindu nationalism

Narendra Modi’s illiberalism may imperil India’s economic progress

Fulfilling his great-power dream requires restraint, not abandon

Bagehot weeps

How America accidentally made a free-money machine for banks

The Federal Reserve should switch it off

Show trial

Charging Israel with genocide makes a mockery of the ICJ

And it diverts attention from the real humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Pics and it didn’t happen

AI-generated content is raising the value of trust

Who did the posting will soon matter more than what was posted

Letters

On Joe Biden, migrants, green data, electrifying heat, wine, meeting rooms

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

The war in Ukraine

Ukraine’s chief spy argues that its security deal with Britain is a game-changer

Pakistan’s election

A former ambassador argues that Pakistan needs a new political compact

Briefing

Invincible Indian

Ram and the strongman: Modi looks unstoppable in India’s election

But Indian democracy is stronger than it seems

Asia

Democracy island

Defying China, Taiwan elects William Lai Ching-te as president

Killing fields

Cambodia’s genocide is still hurting its people

Housewives and work

Married women in Japan are re-entering the labour market

North Korean belligerence

The Korean peninsula is as divided as ever

Banyan

How Hindu is India’s foreign policy?

China

Crime and punishment

Why China’s government is hushing up court rulings

Survey says

China’s leaders are less popular than they might think

Step aside, Ronald

How China is making the burger its own

Chaguan

How China’s public views Taiwan’s elections

United States

The mood thing

Why are Americans so gloomy about their great economy?

Hope springs ephemeral

How did the Iowa result change the Republican primary?

Iowa’s hidden hints

Where Donald Trump still looks vulnerable

Crashing truths

Why car insurance in America is actually too cheap

Over the wall

America’s southern border has become a global crossroads

Finding the votes

The election in Georgia could be as pivotal as it was four years ago

Lexington

It’s not the Trump Party quite yet

Middle East & Africa

How Israel has changed

After it ends, the war in Gaza will still continue to shape Israel

How Israel’s Arabs see themselves

Even as war rages in Gaza, Israel’s Arabs are feeling more Israeli

Sea change

Joe Biden puts the Houthis back on America’s baddies list

Insecurity in Nigeria

Kidnappers are wreaking havoc in Nigeria

Solving Sudan

Why diplomacy over Sudan, Africa’s enduring nightmare, is stuck

The Americas

Milei vs the caste

The fightback against Javier Milei’s radical reforms has begun

Reaping what you sow

Wild boar hybrids are raising hell on the Canadian prairies

Accelerated ageing

Plunging fertility rates are creating problems for Latin America

Europe

Shell-shocked

Can Europe arm Ukraine—or even itself?

Trip out of hell

A new therapy for Ukraine’s scarred soldiers: ketamine

Reining in the reindeer

Russia’s war is splitting the indigenous Sami in two

Ungainly Spain

Spain shows regional nationalists make bad coalition partners

O partigiano

Kin of Italian victims of Nazis may finally get compensation

Charlemagne

Europe’s monarchies are a study in dignified inanity

Britain

Still troubled

Northern Ireland’s peace process is not over

Getting verse

Britain has seen an alarming rise in poetry sales

Rejoice!

Rishi Sunak’s pyrrhic victory on Rwanda

Human says no

Britain’s Post Office scandal is a typical IT disaster

Constituency cartography

The map for the next British election has been redrawn

Notes on a scandal

Britain tries to correct the treatment of gender-dysphoric kids

Bagehot

Scottish nationalism’s left turn

International

Israel in the dock

The genocide case Israel faces is more about politics than the law

On the bench

Israel’s judge in The Hague is its government’s bogeyman

Business

Duck and cover

Many CEOs fear a second Trump term would be worse than the first

Hardly PAC-ed to the rafters

Donald Trump’s populism is turning off corporate donors

Fiscal Trumponomics

Donald Trump’s tax cuts would add to American growth—and debt

The Sam and Satya show

The bosses of OpenAI and Microsoft talk to The Economist

Cross-strait squeeze

China may be losing its sway over Taiwanese business

Bartleby

Companies run to their own annual rhythms

Amer’s American dream

Can Arc’teryx’s owner revive Chinese IPOs in America?

Big by design

A $35bn mega-merger strengthens a quiet chip duopoly

Schumpeter

Why BlackRock is betting billions on infrastructure

Finance & economics

Of money and Modi

How strong is India’s economy under Narendra Modi?

Global monetary policy

The countries which raised rates first are now cutting them

Follow that!

Ted Pick takes charge of Morgan Stanley

The turn of the screw

Australian houses are less affordable than they have been in decades

Double dip

China’s population is shrinking and its economy is losing ground

Buttonwood

Wall Street is praying firms will start going public again

The fallout

The Middle East faces economic chaos

Free exchange

What economists have learnt from the post-pandemic business cycle

Science & technology

More bucks for bigger bangs

The Pentagon is hurrying to find new explosives

A slippery concept

Common sense is not actually very common

Fake-news news

Many AI researchers think fakes will become undetectable

Mass production?

Researchers in China create the first healthy, cloned rhesus monkey

Culture

In your face

The rise of foul-mouthed female slam poets in Africa

Diary of a bad year

A tougher sentence for Hitler in 1923 could have changed history

Copy wrongs

A new book looks at the past and future of copyright

Back Story

How should cinema tackle the horror of the Holocaust?

Live music

Does Las Vegas’s Sphere reveal the future of concerts?

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Obituary

From boys to men