Mar 2nd 2024

India’s north-south divide

The world this week

Leaders

Voting intentions

How to build a British voter

Labour is assembling an electoral coalition that is young and broad, but volatile too

How high can markets go?

A golden age for stockmarkets is drawing to a close

Share prices may be surging, but even AI is unlikely to drive a repeat of the past decade’s performance

A losing battle

Fentanyl cannot be defeated without new tactics

Suppression works even less well than with other narcotics

French politics

The perils of a Le Pen presidency

Even three years out, the prospect is alarming

Don’t seize: capitalise

How to put Russia’s frozen assets to work for Ukraine

Exploit them to the full, but legally

One nation under Modi

To see India’s future, go south

The country’s regional division could make it—or break it

How tyranny travels

Autocracies are exporting autocracy to their diasporas

The new danger from transnational repression

Letters

On Britain’s armed forces, cousins, business in Italy, private-equity backed insurance, age, Terry Pratchett

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Russia after Navalny

A former political prisoner on how the West should honour Alexei Navalny’s legacy

India’s election

Ashoka Mody argues that India is stunted by a lack of moral leadership

Briefing

Relentless reaper

America’s ten-year-old fentanyl epidemic is still getting worse

The government is spending record amounts, just to slow its growth

Asia

India’s north-south divide

Inside Narendra Modi’s battle to win over the south

The actual opposition?

Massive farmers’ protests are a headache for Narendra Modi

Banyan

What will Prabowo Subianto’s foreign policy look like?

China

The Chinese diaspora

Living outside China has become more like living inside China

Chaguan

China tells bankers to be more patriotic

United States

In vitro veritas

IVF is a slam-dunk issue for Democrats. Abortion may not be

Stoked

The economics of skiing in America

Commitment phobia

Does Joe Biden’s re-election campaign have a Gaza problem?

Answers that raise questions

Is Google’s Gemini chatbot woke by accident, or by design?

Cobalt blues

A millennial is building America’s first nickel-cobalt refinery

Lexington

Vladimir Putin hardly needs to interfere in American democracy

Middle East & Africa

Dreaming of Dubai

Africa’s tiger economy is shot

Fresh blood, same problems

The Palestinians’ new prime minister faces a nightmare

The beginning of the end

As Iran scares the Middle East, at home its regime rots

The Americas

Bringing back Brazil

Lula’s gaffes are dulling Brazil’s G20 shine

The switcheroo

The former president of Honduras is tried for drug trafficking

Kicking back

Argentina’s football clubs are resisting privatisation

Europe

France’s National Rally

How Marine Le Pen is preparing for power

Get off the fence

Europe hopes barbed wire will keep migrants out. It won’t

After the war

Azerbaijan is racing to rebuild in recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh

Within range

Kharkiv is struggling under Russian rocket attacks

Friendly fire

France and Germany are at loggerheads over military aid to Ukraine

Charlemagne

Is Europe’s stubby skyline a sign of low ambition?

Britain

Psephological profiling

A changing British electorate is propelling Labour towards victory

Own goals

English football’s financial fracas

Local politics

The institution that taught Margaret Thatcher about politics

Just add water

More than half of Britain’s ponds have disappeared

Bagehot

Speaker Hoyle and the strange politics of human resources

International

Surviving in a multipolar world

Africa is juggling rival powers like no other continent

Business

Meet your new copilot

How businesses are actually using generative AI

The meaning of Mistral

Meet the French startup hoping to take on OpenAI

Divestment dilemmas

Western multinationals’ Russian dilemmas

Bartleby

Why you should lose your temper at work

Barrelling along

Can whisky conquer Chinese palates?

Motor no-shows

Car shows in the West are in terminal decline

Schumpeter

How Argentine businessmen size up Javier Milei

Finance & economics

Stakeholders at the gate

Activist investing is no longer the preserve of hedge-fund sharks

Still coupled

How Trump and Biden have failed to cut ties with China

Buttonwood

Uranium prices are soaring. Investors should be careful

Too efficient

Are passive funds to blame for market mania?

Free exchange

What do you do with 191bn frozen euros owned by Russia?

Fly up to the sky

Stockmarkets are booming. But the good times are unlikely to last

Science & technology

Silicon dreamin’

AI models make stuff up. How can hallucinations be controlled?

A kiss and a cure

Scientists want to tackle multiple sclerosis by treating the kissing virus

At the heart of the battery revolution

A variety of new batteries are coming to power EVs

Your brain on music

Why recorded music will never feel as good as the real thing

Culture

Money and the arts

Britain’s arts still dazzle the world

Back Story

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” points to the future of theatre

An artist’s artist

Why did a once-revered painter, Frans Hals, fall out of favour?

Cartoon gloom

“Palestine”, an old graphic novel, is making a comeback

Colour by numbers

Can a dozen shipwrecks tell the history of the world?

Go big or go home

Cinemas may be dying. But IMAX and the high end are thriving

The Economist reads

The Economist reads

What to read to understand cyber-security

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Obituary

His old enemy