May 21st 2022

The coming food catastrophe

The world this week

Leaders

War and farming

The coming food catastrophe

War is tipping a fragile world towards mass hunger. Fixing that is everyone’s business

The meaning of membership

Why NATO should swiftly admit Sweden and Finland

Vladimir Putin has only himself to blame if his neighbours seek protection from his aggression

The tide goes out

The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

And investors are beginning to discriminate

State of disarray

America’s states are drifting apart over illegal immigration

Deepening fissures over the treatment of illegal immigrants

From asterisks to spiderwebs

Travel patterns have changed for good. Transport systems should, too

Enough with all the radii

Letters

On abortion, Jaroslav Hasek, doctors, Celtic, staff meetings

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Finance and economics

Claudia Sahm on what is driving inflation in America

Finance and economics

Angel Ubide expects inflation to subside if supply shocks fade

Finance and economics

Jón Steinsson believes that a painless disinflation is no longer plausible

Briefing

The food system in crisis

A world grain shortage puts tens of millions at risk

War, extreme weather and export controls are all contributing

United States

Welfare states

Democratic states are extending welfare benefits to the undocumented

Buffalo shooting

Online radicalisation led a white supremacist to target African-Americans

O’Hareport

Supply-chain woes are forcing more of America’s trade onto planes

Keystone-cop politics

Republicans divide and Democrats unite in the Pennsylvania primaries

Politics and philosophy

America’s costliest House race and the ideology that made it so

Abortion and the left

Democrats are overreaching in their defence of abortion rights

Lexington

The quiet Ukraine consensus

The Americas

From Escobar to cable cars

Medellín is an example of what Colombia could be

Seer shells

In Brazil, if you need answers, see a cowrie-shell thrower

Bello

Latin America’s divisions over defending democracy

Asia

These new puritans

Burmese civilians are caught between the junta and the resistance

Pass the Kool-Aid

Myanmar’s resistance is at risk of believing its own propaganda

Last chance salon

Turkmenistan’s new president is clamping down on women’s freedoms

Fewer NIMBYs, more babies

Asia’s advanced economies now have lower birth rates than Japan

Banyan

India’s politicians have figured out how to turn welfare into votes

China

Nothing to see here

The UN’s human-rights chief is finally about to visit Xinjiang

Cardinal Zen’s cardinal sin

Hong Kong arrests a Catholic priest for siding with democrats

All eyes on Beijing

The Chinese capital tries to avoid a lockdown

Found in translation

A new Twitter account shows how the Chinese Communist Party stirs up ultra-nationalism

Chaguan

Covid shows that in China, politics matters more than pragmatism

Middle East & Africa

Too important to fail

Is weak governance harming the African Development Bank?

Back into the shadows

Ethiopia’s civil war has been bad news for press freedom

Rooting for change in Beirut

Lebanon’s shock election result shows deep anger at the elite

Sand by me

Dust is a growing threat to lives in the Middle East

Mahdi mania

Iranians yearn for a messiah. The ayatollahs are worried

Europe

Re-opening Odessa

The blockade of Ukraine’s ports is worsening world hunger

The relief of Kharkiv

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is running out of steam, again

First Borne

Meet Elisabeth Borne, France’s new prime minister

Another blow for Mr Scholz

An upset in North Rhine-Westphalia unsettles Germany’s ruling coalition

Hemlock for hacks

Rows over press freedom overshadow Greece’s recent achievements

Charlemagne

A new sitcom gives faces to “faceless Eurocrats”

Britain

The road not taken

The future of public transport in Britain

Here we go again

Britain and the EU head towards a showdown over the Northern Ireland protocol

The beat has changed

The wrong sort of police are being hired

Get with the program

How government IT systems affect the cost-of-living crisis in Britain

Silent as the grave

Too many Britons die from medical mistakes

Store flaw

Wholesale gas prices in Britain have collapsed

Forgive us our trespasses

A radical group of ramblers roams the British countryside

Bagehot

UKSA! An obsession with America pollutes British politics

International

The propaganda front

The Putin Show

Business

The Masa seesaw

After a bruising year, SoftBank braces for more pain

Trick or tweet?

Elon Musk, Twitter and an epic case of buyer’s remorse

A new foundation

Gautam Adani wants to cement his grip on India’s heavy industry

The great unSPACing

SPACs raised billions. As mergers dry up, we follow the money

Supermarket crash

Shares in America’s big retailers swoon

Bartleby

Making brainstorming better

Schumpeter

Why America’s clean-energy industry is stuck

Finance & economics

Recession watch

Global growth is slowing, but not stopping—yet

When bad data are good

Even China’s official economic figures look bleak

Powder keg

A baby-formula shortage feeds criticism of corporate heft and price gouging

The infrastructure cracks

Why crypto’s bruising comedown matters

Carbon sinks

Offset markets struggle in the face of surging commodity prices

Buttonwood

Is China “uninvestible”?

Half-measures

India’s once-vaunted statistical infrastructure is crumbling

Free exchange

How to unleash more investment in intangible assets

Science & technology

Carbon nanomaterials

The wonder material graphene may have found its killer app

Culture

Comic relief

Doctors and therapists are turning to comic books

Arrival of the interspecies

AI is changing the way people relate to other beings

A scoundrel’s life

The dark side of Casanova’s hedonism

Home Entertainment

Discover the charm of Wendell Berry’s rural tales

The English civil war

The pity and horror of “The Siege of Loyalty House”

Johnson

Technology is making it easier to write and learn Chinese

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

That non-sinking feeling

The Brazilian Amazon has been a net carbon emitter since 2016

Obituary

The forgotten fire