Covid-19 is here to stay. People will have to adapt

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub IT IS ASTONISHING how rapidly the pandemic has spread, despite all the efforts to stop it. On February 1st, the day covid-19 first appeared on our front cover, the World Health Organisation...

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Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan must learn how to share the Nile river

ONCE COMPLETED, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be nearly twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty and as wide as the Brooklyn Bridge is long. The reservoir behind it is roughly the size of London. Sitting on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile river, the dam is the largest hydro-electric project in Africa. Soon it will produce 6,000...

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Multinationals love India more than it loves them

IF YOU LOOK at the headline figures, foreign companies still appear to be piling into India even as its economy reels from the pandemic. Since the country went into lockdown in March some $20bn of cross-border deals have been announced, with the likes of Facebook and KKR, a private-equity giant, sticking cash into digital firms, solar parks and more....

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Why Joe Biden’s instinctive caution makes real change possible

WHEN THE history of the Trump presidency is written, a photo-op in Lafayette Square at the beginning of June might just mark the turning-point. Since he announced his run for the White House in 2015, Donald Trump’s political method has been to maximise at all times the amount of attention directed at him. The Lafayette Square escapade offended Christians,...

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China’s draconian security law for Hong Kong buries one country, two systems

THE CHINESE government is spreading fear in Hong Kong. The first shock came in May, when it announced plans to impose a sweeping national-security law on the territory, without the say-so of its legislature. Then it drafted the bill behind closed doors, keeping details secret even from Hong Kong’s administration. After the law was passed on June 30th...

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Investors’ love affair with commercial property is being tested

YOU MAY not realise it, but a growing share of your savings and pensions pot has been wagered on the commercial buildings in which you work, shop and sleep. The original idea was that these investments would provide a steady stream of earnings for decades into the future, rather as government bonds did before interest rates fell so low. But now the...

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Why the next Olympics should include Fortnite

CHAMPIONS FROM many countries are dropped on an island, wearing tight, garish outfits that show off their muscles. They search for weapons, such as guns and rocket-launchers. In teams of two, they try to kill everyone else on the island. The last pair standing wins gold medals and global adulation. The Tokyo Olympics, which were supposed to start...

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Underestimating the risks of annexation

NINE MEN and one woman have led Israel since the six-day war of 1967 brought the West Bank under its control. Nearly all thought it too risky to annex any of the territory beyond East Jerusalem. True, Israel has built scores of settlements since the war, so that more than 400,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank, alongside 3m Palestinians. But its...

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Politicians ignore far-out risks: they need to up their game

IN 1993 THIS newspaper told the world to watch the skies. At the time, humanity’s knowledge of asteroids that might hit the Earth was woefully inadequate. Like nuclear wars and large volcanic eruptions, the impacts of large asteroids can knock seven bells out of the climate; if one thereby devastated a few years’ worth of harvests around the globe it...

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Wirecard’s scandal shows the benefits of short-sellers

GERMANS CONSUMED by tech envy of America allowed themselves a flush of pride when Wirecard won a place in the DAX index in 2018, and its stockmarket value surged above €24bn ($28bn). Here, it seemed, was a European fintech champion: a digital-payments firm headed for global glory. Today, faces are red again—with embarrassment. Wirecard has admitted...

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