Making babymaking better: A special report on the future of fertility
The world this week
Leaders
Fertility technology
Making babymaking better
IVF is failing most women. But new research holds out hope for the future
Too darn hot
How cities can respond to extreme heat
Officials from Beijing to Phoenix are grappling with unbearable temperatures
Economic optimism
The world economy is still in danger
Falling inflation is good news. But it is too early to hail a “soft landing”
A Himalayan thaw
What the China-India detente means for the West
The Asian giants are learning to live with each other
Chained gangs
What the world’s budding autocrats are learning from El Salvador
President Nayib Bukele is gutting democracy and being applauded for it
Sanctions and reparations
Should Ukraine get Russia’s frozen reserves?
How to make Russia pay for the war while upholding international law
By Invitation
Letters
On deep-sea mining, water regulation in Britain, the Italian left, working from home
Letters to the editor
Briefing
Britain
Universities’ funding
Muddled policies are harming British universities
Inflation dips
British inflation may not be as sticky as thought
Back to the future
Sir Tony Blair mesmerises the Labour Party, again
Britain and China
Whoever runs Britain will struggle to get tough on China
Europe
Kremlin black box
Post-mutiny Moscow descends into factional murk
Waiting for the afterglow
Zaporizhia braces itself for Russian nuclear tricks
France’s Zeitenwende
France’s foreign-policy revolution
Come and take them
Why the EU will not seize Russian state assets to rebuild Ukraine
Chebureki beat pierogi
How Ukrainian refugee entrepreneurs are changing Poland
United States
The sizzling Sunbelt
Americans are moving to places besieged by extreme heat
Reproductive politics
The FDA approves the first-ever non-prescription birth-control pill
Big-donor populism
Ron DeSantis is relying on big donors and his super PAC
A new Mexican-American war
How Mexico has become the “enemy” of America’s Republicans
Middle East & Africa
Just give me a reason
Israel’s constitutional chaos is far from over
Tickling smuggled ivories
How well-connected Iranians import their goodies
The Americas
Terminator Salvador
Nayib Bukele shows how to dismantle a democracy and stay popular
What Latin America thinks
Young Latin Americans are unusually open to autocrats
Asia
Asia’s battery battlefield
A battery supply chain that excludes China looks impossible
Bloodless revolution
Singapore is the world leader in selling cultivated meat
Crossing the line
An American soldier has deserted to North Korea
China
A for effort, Xi for control
Can academic joint ventures between China and the West survive?
Data and the disease
A clue to China’s true covid-19 death toll
The wind of change
Germany’s new strategy for dealings with China
What would the party say?
How China trains its journalists to report “correctly”
International
Asia’s biggest beasts
What if China and India became friends?
Business
Last-chance saloon
Can a Czech billionaire rescue Casino?
A new big cheese
Startups are producing real dairy without a cow in sight
India’s rickshaw wars
A battle of rickshaw apps shows the promise of India’s digital stack
Finance & economics
A feel-bad recovery
How much trouble is China’s economy in?
Science & technology
Turning up the heat
Are heatwaves evidence that climate change is speeding up?
The Scrap Kings
Scrapyards adopt new high-tech ways to dismantle cars
When mammals attack
A spectacular new fossil shows a mammal making a meal of a dinosaur
Culture
Bombs and a bombshell
Realism with “Oppenheimer”, or escapism with “Barbie”?
The heat also rises
Extreme temperatures separate “the cool and the damned”
Opposites that never meet
A new novel imagines life in Andy Warhol’s studio
Economic & financial indicators
Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Graphic detail
Obituary
When angels laugh
Milan Kundera believed that truth lay in endless questioning
Technology Quarterly
The most personal technology
In vitro fertilisation is struggling to keep up with demand
If at first you don’t succeed…
IVF remains largely a numbers game
Selling hope
The fertility sector is booming
Our bodies, ourselves
Not all types of families can access IVF
Eggs from elsewhere
Some women need eggs from others, or from their younger selves
Eggs from scratch
New ways of making babies are on the horizon
Conception, reconceived
Lack of basic research has hampered assisted reproduction
Between the lines
Video: Why we know so little about human reproduction
In vitro fertilisation
Sources and acknowledgments
The Economist explains
The Economist explains
What happens when extreme weather hits several places at once?
The Economist explains