Trump’s legacy: The shame and the opportunity
The world this week
Leaders
American politics
Trump’s legacy—the shame and the opportunity
The invasion of the Capitol and the Democrats’ victory in Georgia will change the course of the Biden presidency
The pandemic
Who should get the jab?
The answer will decide not only who survives, but also the sort of world they will inherit
If you can’t beat them
What explains bitcoin’s latest boom?
The cryptocurrency might yet justify a high price. But it will not up-end global finance
Online encyclopedias
Happy Birthday, Wikipedia
Lessons from the success of a different sort of tech titan
Global trade
How to deal with China
Arrests in Hong Kong and Europe’s trade deal show the West is on the back foot
Time out
Too many African countries are letting presidential term limits slip
Few presidencies improve with time
Letters
On military deception, Singapore, Christian Democrats, big tech, Cuba, accents, banking
Letters to the editor
Briefing
Vaccinating the world
The great task
The race to vaccinate the world against covid-19 has begun in earnest, posing problems for many and providing opportunities for some
Europe
Putting it back together again
Repairing the transatlantic rift will be tricky
Frenemies of the left
Does Spain’s leftish leader have his far-left allies under control?
Between a rock and a softer place
Spain and Britain do a deal over Gibraltar
Laptops at the ready
The lockdown has helped Greece to digitise
Bruised Oranges
The Dutch royals are botching covid-19 etiquette
The clown ceiling
Far-right parties in Europe tend to rise—and fall
Britain
Chlorinated data
Why Google and Facebook are shifting British data to America
Political attitudes
Declinism is booming in Britain
Middle East & Africa
Monkey business
What mummified baboons say about globalisation
Hopeful hoops
Can basketball heal South Sudan?
Making trouble and making up
Iran bares its teeth, while its rivals mend fences
Here to stay, however miserable
Making life hard for Syrian refugees will not compel them to leave
United States
After the insurrection
The terrible scenes on Capitol Hill illustrate how Donald Trump has changed his party
So sweet and clear
Two stunning victories for Democrats in Georgia upend the Senate
Working on the chain gang
Congress is moving to block goods made with the forced labour of Uyghurs
The Americas
Green wave, blue breakwater
Argentina’s legalisation of abortion will provoke a backlash
Banning bus crawls
Small slips in Barbados cause a big spike in covid-19
Asia
Permanently excluded
Private schools that educate 50% of Indian children are folding
Five different ways to applaud
All the parties in Kazakhstan’s election support the government
China
Knee-capping opposition
Hong Kong arrests dozens of pro-democracy activists
A woman walks into a bar
Stand-up is booming in China, with women centre-stage
International
The other tech giant
Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher
Technology Quarterly
A hundred years of bright ideas
How understanding light has led to a hundred years of bright ideas
Information technology
From the universe to the dataverse
Advancing science
Illumination at the limits of knowledge
Business
German business and China
Deutschland AG continues to pour billions into China
America v China Inc
NYSE boots out Chinese telecoms firms—then it doesn’t, then does
A Stellantis is born
The Fiat Chrysler-PSA mega-merger may give rise to a carmaking star
An M&A revival
Corporate nuptials are back on
Thanks, but no thanks
Energy companies give the Arctic the cold shoulder
Giving and taking
What happens when firms have to stump up for good causes
Bartleby
The science of networking
Schumpeter
A tech CEO’s guide to taxes
Finance & economics
The markets in 2021
Why the crazy upward march in stock prices might just continue
An expanding pool
Investors start to pay attention to water risk
Burying the dead
China wants to delist its own companies: the bad ones
Covid-10trn
What is the economic cost of covid-19?
Science & technology
The future of armed conflict
America's approach to command and control goes peer to peer
The origins of dogs
A new idea about how dogs were domesticated
Geography
How to map the seabed from the sky
Culture
Computer says no
New tools are making it easier to authenticate paintings
Changing the guards
A revealing account of the Cultural Revolution
Northern exposure
The Arctic misadventures of William Barents
Close quarters
The making of a murder
Memory lane
“Asylum Road” is a twisty tale of trauma
Economic & financial indicators
Graphic detail
A rich-world Wikipeak
Wikipedia’s future lies in poorer countries
Obituary
The milk of human kindness