Schools in rich countries are making poor progress. They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson
Hanging on to the best of them is getting harder
And so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi
Afew years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected cctv cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.
After the election, populists of the right and left could hobble a centrist president
He has a domestic agenda, but no easy way to bring it about
American fried chicken can now be served from the Philippines
Deadly heat is increasingly the norm, not an exception to it
An energy-rich future is within reach
The future of combat
Technology will make war faster and more opaque. It could
The character of warfare is about to be profoundly changed by artificial intelligence
Growth alone will not fix Britain’s public finances
A snap election in France reveals the flimsiness of his legacy
Wine collectors are at last taking champagne seriously
If America wants to maintain its lead, it should focus less on keeping China down
Elsewhere, political dysfunction and fiscal frailties are taking a toll
A Trump victory would reward them. But not enough to justify the risks
The peninsula is becoming a death trap for the Kremlin’s forces
There is more to AI than ChatGPT
At a crucial moment they encapsulate the dilemma of how to handle populism
A backlash against abortion bans is energising the middle ground in America
They are saving like never before. But even that may not bring interest rates down
Economies must adapt to baby busts instead
As birth rates plunge, many politicians want to pour money into policies that might lead women to have more babies. Donald Trump has vowed to dish out bonuses if he returns to the White House. In France, where the state already spends 3.5-4% of gdp on family policies each year, Emmanuel Macron wants to “demographically rearm” his country. South Korea is contemplating handouts worth a staggering $70,000 for each baby. Yet all these attempts are likely to fail, because they are built on a misapprehension.
Governments’ concern is understandable. Fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere and the rich world faces a severe shortage of babies. At prevailing birth rates, the average woman in a high-income country today will have just 1.6 children over her lifetime. Every rich country except Israel has a fertility rate beneath the replacement level of 2.1, at which a population is stable without immigration. The decline over the past decade has been faster than demographers expected.
The death of the president changes the power dynamic
A new generation of AI chips is on the way
The rainbow nation needs an alternative to decline under the ANC
Rishi Sunak’s election call makes no sense, but is good news
Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible
At first glance, the world economy looks reassuringly resilient. America has boomed even as its trade war with China has escalated. Germany has withstood the loss of Russian gas supplies without suffering an economic disaster. War in the Middle East has brought no oil shock. Missile-firing Houthi rebels have barely touched the global flow of goods. As a share of global gdp, trade has bounced back from the pandemic and is forecast to grow healthily this year.
The assignment of judges to cases should be random, not political
Under Lawrence Wong, the city-state has a new chance to change
Despite Xi Jinping’s protestations, China does have an overcapacity problem
How to pacify the world’s most violent region
The American-led financial order is giving way to a more divided one
Ten years ago your correspondent was fidgeting nervously in a meeting room at vtb Capital, the investment-banking arm of Russia’s second-biggest bank, just across the road from the Bank of England. During the recruitment process for a graduate job, things had taken a worrying turn. A Russian missile had shot down mh17, a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, while it was passing over Ukraine. Plenty of Russian firms were already under Western sanctions owing to the annexation of Crimea earlier that year. Now sanctions were being ramped up, and vtb Capital’s parent bank was a prime target. Hence the fidgeting: how to ask the slightly alarming man across the table whether there would even be a vtb in a few months’ time?
Boomers Daily 