THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE – MARCH 14, 2026 PREVIEW

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE: The latest issue features An attack on the world economy‘….

An attack on the world economy

Whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz, energy markets have been changed for ever

China’s hereditary elite is taking shape

The Communist Party is afraid to tax inherited wealth

There are no good options for Iran’s nuclear programme

If America cannot eliminate the threat, what should it do?

How to teach Donald Trump a Latin lesson

By alienating Hispanics, he has given Democrats an open goal

Haiti needs order first, then elections

Voters must be able to turn out without risking death

THE NEW STATESMAN MAGAZINE – MARCH 13, 2026

The Great British Crisis

THE NEW STATESMAN: The latest issue features ‘The Great British Crisis’…

Don’t let Britain decline

By John Bew

John Healey: Labour needs the “broadest group” in government

By Ailbhe Rea

Make porn expensive again

By Pippa Bailey

The rise of British Muslims

By Tam Hussein

THE NEW YORK TIMES – THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2026

Iran’s New Supreme Leader Issues Defiant Statement

The Iranian state media said Mojtaba Khamenei had released his first written statement as the new leader. It included a call to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.

How Hegseth Came to See Moral Purpose in War as Weakness

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bellicose and vengeful rhetoric describing the war in Iran grew out of his experience in Iraq.

Iran’s Frantic Attempt to Save Its Ships Before Torpedo Attack

The Iranian Navy sought refuge in Sri Lanka and India. While India obliged, Sri Lanka stalled over fears it would threaten its neutrality.

War Has Sent Thousands of Planes Flying in the Other Direction

Tens of thousands of flights have been cancelled since the initial strikes, and airlines that relied on Iranian airspace are now trying to find alternatives.

Trump’s Tour of States Is About More Than the Midterms

Beyond talking about the economy and voters’ hardships, President Trump is showing that he still has control over the Republican Party.

U.S. Trade Deficit Fell in January

The data showed imports dipped and exports rose in the month before the Supreme Court struck down most of the president’s tariffs.

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – MARCH 13, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Legacy of War’ – Two previous US military campaigns brought chaos to the Middle East. Why has it started a third?

When news breaks that dominates the agenda to the extent of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, one challenge for the Guardian Weekly team is how to keep the magazine’s covers feeling fresh, week after week, while remaining focused on the same story.

For this week’s edition, in response to Patrick Wintour’s must-read essay on how the US has ignored the lessons of two previous Gulf wars, we asked illustrator Doug Chayka to play with the idea of a Middle East that the US either cannot, or refuses to, see. Doug’s artwork neatly captures the dilemma of a Trump administration that now finds its Iran exit strategy – assuming there was one – cut off by chaos.

Spotlight | War losses mount in rural Russia
Residents of a remote village in Komi Republic say dozens have left to fight in Ukraine, leaving behind grieving families and labour shortages. Pjotr Sauer reports

Science | Is the passion for taxonomy in danger of dying out?
Insect taxonomist Art Borkent fears his field of science is fading, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered, he tells Patrick Greenfield

Feature | The miraculous survival of Nada Itrab
After a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and taken from Spain to Bolivia, authorities feared the worst. They found her in the rainforest nine months later – but that wasn’t the end of her ordeal. Giles Tremlett picks up the story

Opinion | In this war, Britain’s enemy now is Donald Trump
As the Iran disaster escalates, Simon Tisdall argues that Starmer should treat the US president as someone whose actions threaten the lawful, democratic way of life everywhere

Interview | Corinne Bailey Rae
The English singer and songwriter was riding high with a hit album when her husband died tragically young. She discusses grief, fame and rebuilding her life with Simon Hattenstone

THE NEW YORK TIMES – WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2026

3 Ships Hit Along Vital Oil Route; Countries Move to Release Reserves

The Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, is all but closed as fighting in the Middle East expands.

The War With Iran Changed the World in a Week

How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War

In the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli attack, President Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets as a short-term concern that should not overshadow the mission.

At Least 17 U.S. Sites Damaged in War With Iran, Analysis Shows

A Times analysis of satellite imagery and verified videos shows damage to more than a dozen American military sites and installations.

Trump Directs War With the Markets Top of Mind

U.S. Inflation Had Steadied Before War With Iran

Consumer prices stayed subdued in February. Since then, the war with Iran has rekindled concerns about price pressures.

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MARCH 19, 2026 PREVIEW

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Nicholas Spice – Schubert’s Imagination; Daniella Shreir on Chantal Akerman; Tom Stevenson – Death of an Ayatollah; Joanna Biggs – Solvej Balle’s Time Loop….

Iran, Week One

The attack launched on Iran by the US and Israel on 28 February was a textbook case of international aggression, justified in only the most cursory fashion by fictional Iranian threats and undertaken with no clear aims and no clear demands or terms. In announcing the war Donald Trump described it as a wholesale attack on both government and state. The US and Israel would ‘raze their missile industry to the ground’ and ‘annihilate their navy’. Benjamin Netanyahu called on Iranians to ‘come out to the streets and finish the job’. By Tom Stevenson

Mummy’s Favourite

 The late queen can be held responsible for much, but nobody could accuse her of seeming to enjoy her role. For the Yorks, however, enjoyment was everything, and the notion of royal sacrifice, argu­ably a red herring in the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was finally obliterated by their act­ions. By Andrew O’Hagan

Marlowe’s Betrayals

As Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance shows despite itself, it is not Marlowe’s life story that we still need, but his plays and poems: we might well want to avert our eyes from the bathetically dismal life of the man who wrote them. By Michael Dobson

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie

Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Andrew O’Hagan

The Spectator World Magazine – March 16, 2026

THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features ‘The Greater Game’ – Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China says Geoffrey Cain…

Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China

Geoffrey Cain

The United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping’s decade-long project to build an alternative to the American-led order died with him. For years, Beijing quietly assembled a network of dictatorships and client states designed to blunt American power. Iran supplied China with cheap oil and kept Washington bogged down in the Middle

The Iran war has exacerbated the failure of European energy policies

Daniel McCarthy

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of…..

I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one

Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have…

America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era.

Inside MAGA’s meltdown over Iran

Freddy Gray

When President George W. Bush invaded Mesopotamia in 2003, everybody laughed at Comical Ali, the bespectacled Iraqi information minister who kept insisting that the American “rats” were doomed as Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed around him. The world moved on. Iran is not Iraq, as President Donald Trump’s supporters are so fond of saying, and Bush-eraOwen Matthews

Will Turkey intervene in Iran?

With the exception so far of a single missile intercepted over Turkish airspace and a strike on an Azeri-controlled territory near the Iranian border, Tehran has so far declined to mess with the Turks, and for good reasons. Turkey is a member of NATO and attacking it would trigger Article 5 mutual defense measures. And

The Nation Magazine – APRIL 2026 Preview

The Nation

THE NATION MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Trump’s New World Disorder’ – His stranglehold is producing planetary chaos and destruction…

How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant

Rubio’s transformation may say as much about neoconservatism as it does about the man himself.

The Iran War Is a Disaster for Gaza

How the crisis leaves Gaza’s 2 million people more friendless, isolated, and vulnerable than ever before.

Mohammed R. Mhawish

George Packer’s Liberal Imagination

What happens when liberalism’s crisis is made into a fable? 

The Greatest Love Is Grieving

I spent years as a labor organizer. Marguerite Duras’s war novel taught me that the strongest fighters are always the women hurting the most.

Haley Mlotek

THE NEW YORK TIMES – TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2026

Hegseth Says Today Will Be Most ‘Intense’ Day of Air War

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “the most fighters, the most bombers” would be deployed.

Trump’s War in Iran, and Rising Gas Prices, Collide With Midterm Agenda

The attack on Iran has led to a surge in energy prices at a moment when the cost of living is a major issue heading into the fall elections.

New Supreme Leader Inherits Sprawling, Secretive Office That Dominates Iran

U.S. Solar Installations Fell in 2025 as Trump Attacked Clean Energy

More solar energy was added to U.S. grids than any other technology, but the amount installed fell by 14 percent, according to a new report.

Two Supreme Court Justices Debate Handling of Trump Emergency Cases

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – MARCH 16, 2026 PREVIEW

Trump is standing in his golf card dressed in military clothes.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Barry Blitt’s “War-a-Lago” – No Nobel Peace Prize in sight.

Where Is the Iran War Headed?

President Trump has both called for Iranians to rise up and oust the ruthless theocracy and then said that he’s fully prepared to deal with a new religious leader. By Robin Wright

The Zombie Regulator

As the cost of living continues to spiral upward, the Trump Administration is gutting the government agency built to protect Americans from financial ruin. By E. Tammy Kim

The Unmaking of the American University

For decades, research universities have relied on federal funding, with no guarantee that it will last. Now their survival may depend on compliance with the government. By Nicholas Lemann

News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious