Govcoins: The digital currencies that will transform finance
The world this week
Leaders
Bearing harms
Permitless-carry gun laws are misguided and should be scrapped
More states are falling for an extremist take on the Second Amendment
Time’s up
Warren Buffett should step aside for his chosen successor
Berkshire Hathaway needs a leader who will take a fresh look at performance and governance
A state of one’s own
Somaliland deserves international recognition
It is far more functional than Somalia, the state to which it notionally belongs
The power of negative thinking
How to make long-term climate pledges add up
A German court shines a light on the murk of emissions targets
Letters
On politics and business, Saudi Arabia, crowdsourcing, the draft, Singapore, football
Letters to the editor
Briefing
Serfing the web
The new rules of the “creator economy”
Social-media platforms used to get most of their content for free. That dynamic is changing
Europe
From rage to disillusion
Ten years after Spain’s indignados protests
Red in robe, green in thought
A court ruling triggers a big change in Germany’s climate policy
Dublin saw it coming
How the Irish Republic is making the best of Brexit
A no-wine situation
In Turkey’s latest covid-19 lockdown, alcohol sales are barred
Britain
Governing London
Why Boris Johnson wants to clip London’s wings
Water, water everywhere
The pandemic has caused a shortage of cadavers
Discount shopping
Quietly, B&M has become one of Britain’s most successful retailers
A new optimism
Breathing life into Britain’s life-sciences industry
The fat controller
The Treasury may use ticket pricing to discourage working from home
Middle East & Africa
Out of the rubble
Somaliland, an unrecognised state, is winning friends abroad
Free to quit, at last
Foreign workers in Qatar get some basic rights
Losing gracefully
How Arab autocrats pick their opponents
United States
The house wins
American home-ownership rises
The spread of permitless carry
Many states are pushing through more permissive gun laws
Time and money
Black Americans spend more of the day being kept waiting
Crime without punishment
America’s homicide rate has declined since the 1990s. So have homicide-clearance rates
Lexington
In praise of America’s founding fish
The Americas
A presidential power grab
El Salvador’s parliament sacks the country’s top judges
A terrible accident in Mexico City
The collapse of a Mexico City railway bridge kills 25 people
Asia
Urbs prima in Indis
Why is Mumbai handling its second wave better than Delhi?
Let there be mood lighting
South Koreans are discovering a taste for Instagrammable interiors
Pantry poopers
Filipino food banks are accused of communist sympathies
China
The new scold war
China pushes back against critics of its policies in Xinjiang
Nipping and tucking
Why so many young Chinese seek plastic surgery
International
Spam, scam, scam, scam
New technology has enabled cyber-crime on an industrial scale
Special report
The future of banking
A future with fewer banks
Banks v big tech
How fintech will eat into banks’ business
Debt v equity
A bigger role for venture capital
Low interest rates
When interest rates turn negative
Public v private money
When central banks issue digital money
Monetary sovereignty
Will the dollar stay dominant?
Money on my mind
A brave new world for banks
Business
Honky Tonk Warren
Berkshire Hathaway’s questionable performance and governance
A shot in the arm
America wants to waive patent protection for vaccines
The boomer boom
Older consumers have learned new tricks in the pandemic
Schumpeter
Private equity is losing its mystique
Finance & economics
Farce and furious
Why foreign banks’ forays on Wall Street have gone wrong—again
Clean-up operation
Greece’s bumpy road to financial respectability
Free exchange
A new age of suburbanisation could be dawning
Science & technology
Back-ups for GPS
Satellite-navigation systems such as GPS are at risk of jamming
Human prehistory
The oldest burial in Africa
Carcass counting
Roadkill provide a novel way to sample an area’s animals
Engineering
Knitting a road with stones and string
Culture
Sins of the fathers
A masterful director brings Dostoyevsky’s characters to life
Allusive fiction
Puzzles and power games in Rachel Cusk’s new novel
Renaissance art
Albrecht Dürer lived in a world of wonders
Economic & financial indicators
Graphic detail
Why east has least
The legacy of Victorian-era pollution still shapes English cities
Obituary
The third man