The Economist | Independent journalism
Boom!
A new six-part podcast series about the generation that blew up American politics
“Dateline” history quiz
This week: Labour’s triumph; Beckermania
Checks and Balance
Our weekly podcast looks at how the Supreme Court is changing America
Business
America’s giant armsmakers are being outgunned
Why there is little sign of a defence-industry bonanza in a post-peace world
Special report
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress
They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson, in the first of five chapters of his special report
Science & technology
The world’s most studied rainforest is still yielding new insights
Even after a century of research, a tropical rainforest in Panama continues to shed valuable light on the world’s abundance of natural life
The world in brief
A fifth Democrat legislator–Angie Craig, a congresswoman from Minnesota–called on President Joe Biden to step aside, suggesting that his television interview on Friday had failed to quell an uprising in his party...
Voters in France go to the polls on Sunday in the second and final round of a parliamentary election, with attention focused on the prospects of Marine Le Pen’s hard-right, anti-immigration, National Rally party (RN)...
Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s new prime minister, arrived in Scotland on the first leg of a whistle-stop tour of all four nations of the United Kingdom...
Officials from Hamas said the Palestinian group is waiting for a response from Israel after dropping an important objection to a ceasefire agreement in Gaza proposed by America...
Will IVF really be the next frontier in America’s culture wars?
Banning it would be political suicide. But it could get harder to find in conservative states
Bartleby: Your conference-survival handbook
Rules to make gabfests vaguely useful
How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine?
Four charts illustrate a grim new milestone
A new bionic leg can be controlled by the brain alone
Those using the prosthetic can walk as fast as those with intact lower limbs
Boom!
A new six-part podcast series about the generation that blew up American politics
“Dateline” history quiz
This week: Labour’s triumph; Beckermania
Checks and Balance
Our weekly podcast looks at how the Supreme Court is changing America
Video
Britain’s election
How shallow was Labour’s victory in the British election?
The British party system may be fragmenting but voters delivered a coherent message
Labour has won the British election. Now it has to seize the moment
A volatile electorate and a strong showing for Reform UK are no reason for caution
Bagehot: What now for Britain’s right-wing parties
The Conservatives, Reform UK and the regressive dilemma
Labour’s victory is good for Britain’s union of four countries
It is not clear how long that will last
World news
A reformer wanting a nuclear deal with America wins Iran’s election
Voters turned their backs on hardliners for Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist candidate
China’s presence in Latin America has expanded dramatically
The region’s leaders are failing to consider the risks of growing dependence
Meet the victors in Africa’s coup belt
They are militaristic, nationalistic and keen to cut a deal
The EU should be the world’s heat-pump pioneer
But the union is falling behind in its efforts
Business, finance and economics
The world’s richest countries in 2024
Our annual ranking compares economies in three different ways
Why Finland and others are vaccinating people against bird flu
The virus is spreading undetected in mammals
What next for Amazon as it turns 30?
From Prime Video to AWS, the e-empire is stitching together its disparate parts
What happened to the artificial-intelligence revolution?
So far the technology has had almost no economic impact
Summer reads
The rise of Mollywood, India’s more subtle film hub
Instead of relying on big dance numbers, Malayalam movies tell stories
Why travel guidebooks are not going anywhere
Despite predictions that the internet would kill them
Mexico has become a testing ground for psychedelic therapies
From ibogaine to LSD, the benefits of psychedelics are not yet backed up by strong medical evidence
Books (and films) about the joy and pain of music festivals
From Bethel to the Bahamas
More on America’s election
Joe Biden’s ABC interview will not quell doubts about his future
Nor will it resolve the Democratic Party’s dilemma
Why Biden must withdraw
The president and his party portray themselves as the saviours of democracy. Their actions say otherwise
Who might Donald Trump pick as his running-mate?
The Republican nominee has a number of hopefuls to pick from
Trump v Biden: who’s ahead in the polls?
The Economist is tracking the race to be America’s next president
Stories most read by subscribers
Featured read
Political strategies, courtesy of “House of the Dragon” and “Shogun”
One swords-and-scheming TV show seems more relevant today than the other
Israel and its enemies
The next terrifying war: Israel v Hizbullah
It would feature kamikaze drones, mass blackouts and the largest missile barrage in history
Is the American-built pier in Gaza useful or a fiasco?
The Economist went to see
Is a Palestinian state a fantasy?
Amid war in Gaza, the prospect is at once more relevant than ever and more distant
Hamas and Israel are still far apart over a ceasefire deal
For all America’s optimism, the two sides look fundamentally irreconcilable
The war in Ukraine
Ukraine’s war has created millions of broken families
Children and wives have been apart from their fathers and husbands for more than two years
Ukraine has a month to avoid default
Lending to a borrower at war entails an additional gamble: that it will win
Death and destruction in a Russian city
Russians in the border city of Belgorod have become victims too in the war Vladimir Putin launched against Ukraine
Russia’s latest crime in Mariupol: stealing property
It is seizing homes in order to consolidate control
Edition: July 6th 2024
No way to run a country
The state we’re in
A tour of Britain—and of the past 14 years of Conservative rule
Imagining a war in Lebanon
It would feature kamikaze drones, mass blackouts and the largest missile barrage in history
In its prime: Amazon at 30
Three factors will define its next decade
Technology Quarterly: Spycraft
And so has the world in which they are used,
Special reports: July 13th 2024
Must try harder
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress. They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson
