When the Taliban resumed power, there were hopes that women might not be as excluded, repressed and abused as they were previously. Those hopes have faded.
As smartphone sales plateau, tech giants are furiously searching for new platforms to conquer. Augmented and virtual reality are the new battlefields. And the rise of giga-everything: how the scale of science drives linguistic innovation.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, why Emmanuel Macron’s fate matters beyond France, war crimes in Ukraine (11:05) and we explore the new headset wars between tech firms (16:05).
China’s zero-covid policy is being stretched to breaking point as the virus makes its way through the city. Supplies are low, residents are angry and there is no end in sight.
The debate about air conditioning in America’s sweltering prisons will only heat up further. And how a dispute about time from exactly a century ago remains timely today.
Viktor Orban’s eight-year assault on the country’s institutions will help his bid for re-election. But the poll is far bigger than Hungary: it is a verdict on autocracies everywhere.
Britain welcomes the fees from its staggering number of Chinese university students; we examine the risks that dependence poses. And a prescient Ukrainian war film gets a new lease on life.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week: how the war in Ukraine determines China’s view of the world (9:45), confronting Russia shows the tension between free trade and freedom (16:42), and who are the corporate winners and losers in Russia’s war.
Our correspondent finds Ukraine’s capital already accustomed to an eerie war footing. People are getting married and playing music, even as medicine runs out and a new volunteer army braces for fighting.
Australia’s barely fathomable floods show freakish weather is becoming increasingly common there. And the case for reforming how grammar is taught.
The West’s co-ordinated financial weaponry is starting to bite, opening a new age of economic conflict; once-unthinkable oil embargoes seem now to be on the table.
Taiwan is another democratic country with a big, bullying neighbour; we examine how the war has sparked introspection. And celebrating Pier Paolo Pasolini, a polymathic auteur unjustly known only for his most controversial film.
Last summer President Kais Saied nobbled the legislature; now he has abolished the judiciary. We ask where the country is headed, and why there is so little protest.
Brazil’s modern-art scene, born a century ago this week, flourished despite rocky politics—but the current president has a chokehold on it. And the Thai army’s quixotic mission to evict Bangkok’s legendary street-food hawkers.
Today’s figures showing the first annual economic growth in three years may seem promising. But the grand plans of Prime Minister Kishida Fumio resemble past policies that have not worked.
The finely tuned government of Bosnia is under grave threat from some of the same forces that caused its brutal war. And why roadkill is now on the menu in Wyoming.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, what would happen if financial markets crashed? We also profile China’s thinker-in-chief (11:25) and explore how new spinal implants allow the paralysed to walk, swim and cycle again (18:45).
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