May 6th 2023

Fiscal fantasyland: When will politicians wake up?

The world this week

Leaders

Bust budgets

Governments are living in a fiscal fantasyland

The world over, they are failing to confront the dire state of their finances

The most important election this year

If Turkey sacks its strongman, democrats everywhere should take heart

After 20 years of increasingly autocratic rule, Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks eviction by voters

TOPSHOT - Afghan burqa-clad women walk past a Taliban security personnel along a street in Jalalabad on April 30, 2023. (Photo by Shafiullah KAKAR / AFP) (Photo by SHAFIULLAH KAKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

A new Afghanistan policy

Time to engage (very carefully) with the Taliban

Isolating the mullahs is not working. The West needs a more constructive approach

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 01: A worker pushes a cart as he walks by a First Republic Bank office on May 01, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Federal Regulators seized troubled lender First Republic Bank on Monday and sold all of its deposits and most of its assets to JPMorgan Chase. First Republic becomes the second largest bank in U.S. history to fail since Washington Mutual failed in 2008. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Rebuilding the buffers

How to shore up America’s banks after First Republic’s demise

One route to a safer system is consolidation; another is taxpayer stakes in the sector

T4 bacteriophage (DNA virus), coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM). T4 is a bacteriophage that infects Escherichia coli bacteria. Bacteriophages are composed of proteins that encapsulate a DNA or RNA genome, and may have relatively simple or elaborate structures. Their genomes may encode as few as four genes, and as many as hundreds of genes. Phages replicate within the bacterium following the injection of their genome into its cytoplasm. Bacteriophages are among the most common and diverse entities in the biosphere. Phages are widely distributed in locations populated by bacterial hosts, such as soil or the intestines of animals. One of the densest natural sources for phages and other viruses is sea water, where up to 1 trillion per millilitre have been found in microbial mats at the water surface, and up to 70% of marine bacteria may be infected by phages. Magnification: x55,065 when shortest axis printed at 25 millimetres.

When viruses are good for you

How to battle superbugs with viruses that “eat” them

As antibiotic resistance spreads, bacteriophages could help avert a crisis

Letters

On greening electricity pylons, Englishness, banking, our banana index, jerks at work, cider

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan poses with the political party leaders of his alliance during a ceremony for the launch of amphibious assault ship TCG Anadolu, aiming to extend its drone capabilities from land-based to naval operations, in Istanbul, Turkey, April 10, 2023. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/PPO/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

Crossroads at a crossroads

Could Erdogan be ousted in Turkey’s coming election?

His exit would reshape the country and reverberate around the world

Britain

A member of the military marches on The Mall, in central London, early Wednesday, May 3, 2023, during a rehearsal for the Coronation of King Charles III which will take place at Westminster Abbey on May 6. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

A coronation

Britain crowns Charles III its new king

Bourse correction

Britain is liberalising its stockmarket-listing rules, again

Fixing the state

Britain takes a more sensible approach to post-Brexit regulation

Striking difference

Britain’s NHS has never seen industrial action on this scale

Science lessons

Britain plans new guidance on sex and gender in schools

Bus swap

Wrightbus bets on hydrogen buses

Bagehot

The Tories v the institutions

Europe

IZIUM, UKRAINE - SEPTEMBER 25: Silence, makeshift crosses, and open graves are all that remain after Ukrainian forensic and war crimes investigators complete their exhumation of the bodies of 447 people from a mass burial site created during six months of Russian occupation of Izium, Ukraine, on September 25, 2022. Ukrainian armed forces recaptured more than 8,000 square kilometers of the northeastern Kharkiv region from Russia in a lightning counter-offensive in early September. The advance is yielding evidence of war crimes left behind by retreating Russian troops, including reported cases, in this Izium pine forest graveyard, of some corpses with hands bound or killed with shrapnel or bullets, execution-style. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Getty Images)

Atrocity exhibitions

War-crimes prosecutions in Ukraine are a long game

No Victory Day

Russia could take Bakhmut within weeks

Producing patriotic children for Russia

Vladimir Putin wants to militarise Russian schools

The reckoning

Europe will need to fundamentally reset its fiscal policies

Charlemagne

Emmanuel Macron hopes to reinvent himself in 100 days

United States

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaks at an Iowa Republican Party reception in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, May 13, 2023. For the first time in months, DeSantis on Saturday showed the aggressive political instincts that his allies have long insisted he would demonstrate in a contest against former President Donald Trump. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)Credit: New York Times / Redux / eyevineFor further information please contact eyevinetel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709e-mail: info@eyevine.comwww.eyevine.com *** Local Caption *** 15915686

DeSantis and his dissenters

Ron DeSantis’s lurch in Florida hurts his presidential chances

Lights, camera, industrial action

Hollywood’s writers go on strike

Bye-bye covid

America is ending its emergency declaration for the pandemic

Aid and a bet

USAID is changing the way it tries to do good in the world

Snake, rattle and roil

The fun and the fury of a rattlesnake derby

Lexington

What walking from Washington to New York reveals about America

The Americas

SALAR DE ATACAMA, CHILE - AUGUST 24: In this aerial view, visitors stand atop a large mound of salt bi-product from lithium production at a lithium mine in the Atacama Desert on August 24, 2022 in Salar de Atacama, Chile. Albemarle Corporation, based in Charlotte, N.C. is expanding mining operations there to meet the rising global demand for lithium carbonate, a main component in the manufacture of batteries, increasingly for electric vehicles. At the Salar Plant, natural brine is pumped from under vast salt flats to a series of evaporation ponds. During an 18-month process, the liquid s moved through 15 ponds, eventually turning from dark blue to bright yellow with a lithium concentration of 6 percent. It is then trucked to an Albemarle chemical plant in Antofagasta, where it is processed into battery grade lithium carbonate powder and shipped out internationally. The evaporation process produces large quantities of salt byproduct, much of which is then reprocessed and sold. Chile is the second largest global producer of lithium, after Australia. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Wrangling over white gold

The green revolution will stall without Latin America’s lithium

A libertarian turn

Javier Milei, an Argentine libertarian, is rising in the polls

Stability amid chaos

Santiago Peña, a former economist, is Paraguay’s next president

Middle East & Africa

People pass by damaged cars and buildings at the central market during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum North, Sudan April 27, 2023. REUTERS/ Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Strategic struggle

Sudan’s war is home-grown, but risks drawing in outsiders

Macron’s mission

France moved quickly to evacuate civilians from Sudan

A name to die for

Leaders of Islamic State have a short life-expectancy

Syrians unwanted in Lebanon

Lebanon’s government is squeezing out Syrian refugees

From the Baltic to the Caspian and onwards

Russia and Iran are upgrading their transport links

Asia

Taliban fighters gather in Massoud Square to celebrate their one year anniversary of the capture of Kabul.

Afghan reality

Life under the rule of the Taliban 2.0

A tepid taste of freedom

The opposition looks set to win Thailand’s election

The revolution is over

The Philippines’s once-proud Maoist insurgents are out of ammo

Banyan

America’s closest Indo-Pacific allies are cosying up

China

TOPSHOT - An employee wearing a face mask works at an SMC plant during a media tour organised by the government in Beijing on May 13, 2020, as the country's industrial sector starts again following shutdowns during the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. (Photo by WANG Zhao / AFP) (Photo by WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)

Closed society

China needs foreign workers. So why won’t it embrace immigration?

The smokeless war

A battle against spies in China is spooking locals and foreigners

Battle of the bricks

Lego, the world’s top toymaker, focuses on China

Chaguan

China’s new “Top Gun” normalises war with America

International

Which billionaires lost out?

The 2023 crony-capitalism index

Business

The missing middle

The business trend that unites Walmart and Tiffany & Co

Latin America’s other Amazon

Why MercadoLibre keeps soaring as other e-emporiums sink

Coding in the moonlight

How to two-time your employer: a tech worker’s guide

Ghost writers

Artificial intelligence is remixing journalism into a “soup” of language

Can I sink Icahn?

Hindenburg Research takes on Carl Icahn

Bartleby

A short guide to corporate rituals

Information overlords

China’s data-security laws rattle Western business executives

Schumpeter

America needs a jab in its corporate backside

Finance & economics

In God we bust

America faces a debt nightmare

Borrowing problems

China’s local-debt crisis is about to get nasty

Capital v labour

Are greedy corporations causing inflation?

Prize fighter

Gabriel Zucman, a controversial John Bates Clark medallist

Buttonwood

What the First Republic deal means for America’s banks

Free exchange

How Japanese policymakers ended up in a very deep hole

Science & technology

^BT4 bacteriophage.^b Coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of a ^IT4 bacteriophage^i virus. The swollen structure at top is the head, which contains DNA inside a protein coat. Attached to this is the tail, consisting of a tube-like sheath and tail fibres (at bottom). ^IT4 bacteriophages^i are parasites of ^IEscherichia coli^i, a bacteria common in the human gut. The virus attaches itself to the host bacteria cell wall by its tail fibres; the sheath then contracts, injecting the contents of the head (DNA) into the host. The viral DNA makes the bacteria manufacture more copies of the virus. Magnification: x110,000 at 6x4.5cm size.

The antibiotics crisis

Western firms are becoming interested in a Soviet medicine

Exploring the blue planet

Much of the Earth remains unexplored

Tides of filth

What shipwrecked insects reveal about life at sea in the 17th century

Culture

UNSPECIFIED - DECEMBER 16: Portrait of Charlemagne (742 - Aachen, 814), King of the Franks and Lombards and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, standing with a model of the Palatine Chapel, detail. Painting by Caspar Johann Nepomuk Scheuren (1810-1887), 1825. Aachen, Centre Charlemagne, Neues Stadtmuseum (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

The emperor’s new abode

Was Charlemagne’s base really in Italy rather than Germany?

Reach for the stars

How SpaceX set off a new race to commercialise space

World in a dish

A hunt for ramps exemplifies the pleasures of foraging for dinner

Pocket rockets

The evolution of watches reflects changing relations with time

Back Story

What happens when a story loses a main character?

Obituary

Please contact your Account Representative for licensing use on merchandise and/or resale products; fine art prints, wall dŽcor, gallery, nonprofit or museum displays.Mandatory Credit: Photo by Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Co/REX/Shutterstock (12065832f)During his murder trial at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, Defendant Roy Bryant (1931-1994) sits with his family, Sumner, Mississippi, September 1955. From left, Bryant, son Roy Jr, wife Carolyn, and son Lamar. Bryant was accused of killing Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago who had allegedly flirted with Carolyn. The shirtless boy at the far left is the son of Bryant's co-Defendant, J W Milam.Emmett Till Murder Trial, Sumner, Mississippi, USA

A whistle in the dark

Carolyn Bryant’s was the testimony that doomed Emmett Till

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

The jury is still out

Suicide rates for girls are rising. Are smartphones to blame?

By Invitation

Artificial intelligence

Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilisation

The Crown: a review from down under

Charles III is a good bloke, says Malcolm Turnbull

Banking

Andreas Wesemann asks what government-backed deposit insurance is for

The Economist explains

Migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, are stopped by Tunisian Maritime National Guard at sea during an attempt to get to Italy, near the coast of Sfax, Tunisia, Tuesday, April 18, 2023. The Associated Press, on a recent overnight expedition with the National Guard, witnessed migrants pleading to continue their journeys to Italy in unseaworthy vessels, some taking on water. Over 14 hours, 372 people were plucked from their fragile boats. (AP Photo)

The Economist explains

Why are migrants to Europe fleeing from and through Tunisia?

The Economist explains