How the poor stopped catching up
The world this week
Leaders
Held back
How the world’s poor stopped catching up
Progress stalled around 2015. To restart it, liberalise
Power, chips and constraints
The breakthrough AI needs
A race is on to push artificial intelligence beyond today’s limits
Biden dithers
Let Ukraine hit military targets in Russia with American missiles
Hitting back at the forces blasting Ukrainian cities is legal and proportionate
Painful lessons
Britain should let university tuition fees rise
Domestic students have been paying less in real terms every year
The left’s doctrine of original sin
After peak woke, what next?
The influence of a set of illiberal ideas is waning. That creates an opportunity
By Invitation
Briefing
Back to sleep
America is becoming less “woke”
Our statistical analysis finds that woke opinions and practices are on the decline
Europe
Bringing it all back home
Near-shoring is turning eastern Europe into the new China
Friedrich the Great
Germany’s conservatives choose the country’s probable next leader
The cogs of war
Ukraine is a booming market for Balkan arms makers
Temptation islands
Aland is lovely, weapon-free and too close to Russia
Britain
Grads and grind
The broken business model of British universities
Atomic number
Britain’s nuclear-test veterans want compensation
Rock and goal
Treasure-hunting on England’s Jurassic Coast
Photo crops
British farms are luring the Instagram crowd
The vision thing
How will Labour reform Britain’s public services?
Middle East & Africa
Electronic warfare
Israel has bloodied Hizbullah but is stuck in a war of attrition
Politicians v judges
Israel’s government is again trying to hobble its Supreme Court
Daylight robbery
Nairobi’s reputation for crime is outdated
United States
The man behind the gun
Who is Ryan Routh, Donald Trump’s would-be assassin?
The Adams families
Eric Adams’s friends keep having their phones taken away
Campaign calculus: now you see it
Kamala Harris’s post-debate bounce is now visible in the polls
Rebels with a cause
The never-Trump movement has leaders. What about followers?
The Americas
Rainforest rewards
Can the voluntary carbon market save the Amazon?
Who’s in charge?
How Brazilian lawmakers won extra powers to waste money
Canadian politics
A by-election loss puts Justin Trudeau on the ropes
Asia
A weakened strongman
What does Modi 3.0 look like?
Not waving but plodding
China and Australia are beefing up their Pacific policing
No country for women’s rights
The Taliban is removing every shred of freedom from women
Cramming culture
Private tutoring is booming across poorer parts of Asia
China
International
UNintended consequences
A UN vote on Palestine underlines America’s weakening clout
Technology Quarterly
Putting the silicon back in the valley
AI has returned chipmaking to the heart of computer technology
The names are meaningless
Node names do not reflect actual transistor sizes
Getting to one trillion
How to build more powerful chips without frying the data centre
OK (analogue) computer
Researchers are looking beyond digital computing
The relentless innovation machine
The end of Moore’s law will not slow the pace of change
Chipmaking
Sources and acknowledgments
Business
The age of the hectocorn
OpenAI’s new fundraising is shaking up Silicon Valley
Flying pickets
How much trouble is Boeing in?
Bartleby
Should you be nice at work?
It’s in the game
How FIFA was outplayed by Electronic Arts
On a detour
Why the hype for hybrid cars will not last
Finance & economics
Ignoring the noise
Why the Federal Reserve has gambled on a big interest-rate cut
Smashing pots, selling iron
How China’s communists fell in love with privatisation
Competition policy
European regulators are about to become more political
Science & technology
Waste not, want not
Most electric-car batteries could soon be made by recycling old ones
The mother of invention
China’s AI firms are cleverly innovating around chip bans
Long-standing mystery
How bush pigs saved Madagascar’s baobabs
Culture
God in the bedroom
How odd Christian beliefs about sex shape the world
Rich people’s problems
How today’s wealthy present themselves differently
World in a dish
How the martini became the world’s most iconic cocktail
Here’s the skinny
Weight-loss drugs have changed culture
The Economist reads
The Economist reads
What to read about modern feminism
Economic & financial indicators
Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary
The land of forgetting
Francisco Lopera’s travels in the Andes began to solve a great mystery
Letters
On bitcoin mining, social care, orange juice, dogs, Sudan, country music, contemporary compositions