Author: The Economist

Elizabeth Holmes founded a big blood-testing startup; her claims were founded on very little. As her trial begins we ask how the company got so far before it all crumbled. Research on primates is increasingly frowned upon in the West, leaving a strategic opportunity in places such as China. And lessons in a lost novel by French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.

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The party of Angela Merkel, the outgoing chancellor, is flailing in polls. We ask why the race has been so unpredictable and what outcomes now seem probable. In America, obtaining a kit to make an untraceable firearm takes just a few clicks; we examine efforts to close a dangerous legal loophole. And as sensitivities change, so do some bands’ names. 

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The message for central bankers at the annual jamboree: relax a bit about inflation and be loud and clear about plans to stanch the cash being pumped into economies. The halt to an Albanian hydroelectric-dam project reflects a growing environmental lobby in the country, which sees better uses for its waterways. And following dinosaur tracks—but finding no bones—in Bolivia.

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The suicide-bombings that have killed scores of people signal how the Taliban will struggle to rule Afghanistan; meanwhile the rest of the world’s jihadist outfits are drawing lessons from the chaos. The swift reversal of an explicit-content ban by OnlyFans, a subscription platform, reveals a growing tension between pornography producers and payment processors. And the many merits of 3D-printed homes.

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Naftali Bennett’s first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden will look calm and co-operative. But in time, sharp differences will strain the “reset” they project today. Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency is being defanged; it was simply too good at routing the rot President Joko Widodo once promised to eradicate. And estimating the breathtaking global cost of vaccine inequality.

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For a while, closed borders and strict contact-tracing held the coronavirus at bay. What lessons to take now the Delta variant has broken through in the region? The European Union once had few prosecutorial powers to tackle rampant fraud by member states’ citizens; we examine a new office that can start cleaning house. And a look at Japan’s seasonal-sweet obsession.

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The tech firm has ballooned under his leadership, but Mr Cook’s next ten years will not be as rosy as the first. We ask how he can maintain Apple’s shine. Activists, academics, journalists, now labour unions: Hong Kong’s authorities keep stifling democracy’s defenders wherever they turn. And why California may soon find it hard to bring home the bacon.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to draw attention to Russia’s continued occupation of Crimea, and its failure to look after the region’s citizens. A new report attempts to put numbers to the “enforced disappearances” of Bangladesh’s opposition voices. And why so few astronauts have been women, and how that is changing. 

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The Taliban’s takeover is a boon for China’s propaganda machine: America is tired, its policies disastrous, its values a distraction. Meanwhile China has its own interests in the country. New research may explain rising covid-19 cases among the vaccinated: jabs’ effectiveness wanes with time, and “breakthrough” infections appear more contagious. And the case for working, a bit, while on holiday.

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In the end, the World Health Organisation’s report in March revealed little. We ask why the coronavirus origin story is so crucial, and whether China will ever let it be told. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson will struggle to square his current green promises with his past love—and his party’s—of cars. And the forgotten cooks in fried chicken’s history.

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