Mar 9th 2024

And they’re off. What could upend America’s election?

The world this week

Leaders

And they’re off

Three big risks that might tip America’s presidential election

Third parties, the Trump trials and the candidates’ age introduce a high degree of uncertainty

China’s National People’s Congress

Xi Jinping’s hunger for power is hurting China’s economy

A new economic plan won’t end deflation, even as he sidelines his prime minister

Jam today, ingredients tomorrow

Britain’s budget cuts taxes on the promise of productivity gains

Jeremy Hunt has got it the wrong way round

Course correction

How to fix the Ivy League

Its supremacy is being undermined by bad leadership

The real skinny

A frenzy of innovation in obesity drugs is under way

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are printing money now. But they will not be a stagnant duopoly

Letters

On artificial intelligence, the Holocaust, national conservatives, Ukraine, history, investment advice

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Finance and development

Three presidents on how to make global finance work better for Africa

Britain’s fiscal fiction

A former adviser on the 250 words Jeremy Hunt should read out at the budget

Briefing

Spoilers

Third-party candidates could be decisive in America’s election

But they have to get on the ballot first

Asia

Armed and autocratic

North Korea is arming Russia and threatening war with South Korea

Stock and awe

Why are so many Indians piling into stocks?

Banyan

What the war in Ukraine means for Asia

Too much butter, not enough chicken

Indian food is great. Perhaps too great

China

Xi’s show

China’s parliament is being used to highlight Xi Jinping’s power

Eyes in the sky

China’s satellites are improving rapidly. Its army will benefit

Chaguan

Why China’s confidence crisis goes unfixed

United States

Brand Old Party

Super Trump and his mighty MAGA machine

Sleepy Tuesday

Donald Trump wasn’t MAGA’s only winner on Super Tuesday

Executive inaction

Can Joe Biden bring order to the southern border without Congress?

Words of warning

Is New York rethinking its sanctuary-city status?

Celestial bodies

A private company will send your ashes to the moon

The WPATH files

Leaked discussions reveal uncertainty about transgender care

Lexington

Has Ron DeSantis gone too far in Florida?

Middle East & Africa

Bibi blues

Joe Biden is exasperated by Israel but will not stop its war

The war in Gaza

Ramadan could see respite for Gaza, or widening violence

Riding the CCM seesaw

A lost opportunity to reform Tanzania

Yesterday’s price is not today’s price

Nigeria’s currency crisis is decades in the making

Cryptocurrencies in Africa

Why Africa is crypto’s next frontier

The Americas

Lawless and disordered

The last scraps of the Haitian state are evaporating

The legacy of Lava Jato

Corruption is surging across Latin America

Europe

Climate change

Europe’s new-look winter: floods, high sea levels and melting glaciers

On the wild side

Ukraine’s animals are also victims of the war

Abortion rules

Why France has made abortion a constitutional right

General discomfort

The damage done by Russia’s hack of Germany’s defence ministry

Quick march

Moving weapons around Europe fast is crucial for deterring Russia

Charlemagne

Fifty shades of brown: how splits in Europe’s hard right sap its power

Britain

Briefcase encounter

The British budget mixes sensible tinkering and fiscal fantasy

Newbury’s finest

Vodafone tries to slim its way back to health

Policing

Rishi Sunak’s crackdown on protests is misguided

Tough on puffs

The holes in British plans to ban cigarettes and disposable vapes

Unnatural selection

Why on earth would anyone become a British MP?

Bagehot

What the softening of the Sun says about Britain

International

Poisoned Ivy

America’s elite universities are bloated, complacent and illiberal

Business

Slim pharma

The battle over the trillion-dollar weight-loss bonanza

Nootropic kid on the block

Brain-boosting substances are all the rage

The glass-ceiling index

More women are getting onto corporate boards. Good

Judgment day

OpenAI’s legal battles are not putting off customers—yet

More than a headache

Can Bayer recover from its chronic pain?

Bartleby

How can firms pass on tacit knowledge?

Schumpeter

Apple is right not to rush headlong into generative AI

Finance & economics

Staring down the barrel

Can Israel afford to wage war?

Back to the moon

Bitcoin’s price is surging. What happens next?

Another illusion

Globalisation may not have increased income inequality, after all

Housing costs

America’s rental-market mystery

Urban economics

The world is in the midst of a city-building boom

Free exchange

An economist’s guide to the luxury-handbag market

Buttonwood

How investors get risk wrong

Science & technology

Dancing in the dark

Physicists are reimagining dark matter

Model baby

Scientists can help fetuses by growing tiny replicas of their organs

Final countdown

A new technique to work out a corpse’s time of death

Advanced materials

Graphene, a wondrous material, starts to prove useful

Culture

Zones of interest

Whoever gets the Best Picture Oscar, international films are winning

Back Story

Infatuation, kids, adultery: marriage is the theme of the Oscars

And you call yourself civilised?

The history of the West is not quite what you learned in school

What’s in store?

Museums have a hoarding problem

Hillbilly elegies

Stories about the Dongbei rust belt are resonant in China

No solitude

Gabriel García Márquez’s novella was published against his wishes

The Economist reads

The Economist reads

The best British political diaries

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

The Economist explains

The Economist explains

What is Hindutva, the ideology of India’s ruling party?

The Economist explains

Does generative artificial intelligence infringe copyright?

Obituary

Age and magnificence