Pakistan is at risk of default | Asia

Pakistanis are accustomed to unreliable utilities. Even in affluent neighbourhoods of Karachi and Lahore, residents install diesel generators for power cuts and spare water tanks for when the taps run dry. Yet the events of January 23rd were still shocking. A surge in voltage at a power station in southern Sindh province led to almost the entire country...

22h

Surging stocks undermine a hallowed investing rule | Finance & economics

If you are one of the many buyers of American stocks or Treasury bonds in the past four months, or indeed a buyer of most financial assets over the period, then this article has a message for you: congratulations. Not only have you achieved pretty healthy returns—the s&p 500 index of big American firms is up by 15%—but you have done so while violating...

22h

My never-ending concussion | 1843 magazine

By Jeffrey ReppucciA whistle jolted me awake. The last thing I remembered was the sound my body made as it crashed against the plexiglass. When I opened my eyes I saw my teammates standing around me in a circle. They clapped their sticks and fans cheered as I stumbled to my feet. I gagged on my way to the bench, fighting back the urge to vomit. “You...

22h

The Conservative Party’s morbid symptoms | Britain

Alan Clark knew he was dying. The Tory politician and diarist was “completely desexualated”—a disturbing condition for a philanderer—and whiled away the afternoons “listlessly plucking at Hello or an Audi catalogue”. Eye-blurring headaches had bugged him for years, but he ignored the optician’s injunction to have them checked out until a sudden hospitalisation...

22h

Is the relationship between China and Russia one of equals? | Podcasts

IT’S BEEN a year since Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced the “no-limits” friendship between China and Russia, but is it one between equals? In the second episode of a two-part series, The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, David Rennie, and our senior China correspondent, Alice Su, explore the rocky past of Sino-Soviet relations with historian...

22h

Michael Liebreich wants existing low-carbon technologies to be scaled up much faster | By Invitation

IN A RECENT piece for By Invitation, Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist, argued against efforts to maximise carbon reductions by 2030, on the basis that “hoping to deploy today’s innovations globally is unrealistic”. At the heart of his argument lies the claim that wind and solar “can only be a minority share of our electric-power generation…because...

22h

How drones dogfight above Ukraine | The Economist explains

DURING THE first world war, fighter pilots duelled with pistols and rifles. Today, in the skies over Ukraine, a new type of dogfight is taking place—between drones. In October a video emerged on social media showing a Ukrainian drone ramming a Russian one, causing the latter to crash. It was the first known wartime duel between drones. Since then, Ukrainian...

22h

The lessons from the Chinese spy-balloon | China

CHINA AND America are drifting towards a cold war. Distrust is turning into something far more disruptive: a contest between two irreconcilable powers, each sure that the other is bent on thwarting its rival’s core ambitions and interests. The shooting down of a Chinese balloon off South Carolina is a test of whether the two countries have the wisdom...

22h

The scale of the disaster in Turkey and Syria keeps growing | Europe

THE SILENCE is the worst part. Every quarter of an hour the bulldozers and cranes digging through mounds of debris stop working, hoping to hear the screams of people trapped underneath. There are none. Instead there are the sobs and prayers of the relatives, friends and other onlookers gathered below. The rubble is all that remains of a 14-storey building...

22h

“It’s hard to communicate the scale of the destruction”—earthquakes in Turkey and Syria | Podcasts

AMID UNTHINKABLE destruction and loss of life, we examine the factors that will frustrate relief efforts following earthquakes in an already troubled region. As President Joe Biden prepares to welcome a new chief of staff, we speak with the author who literally wrote the book on America’s second-most-powerful government job. And Argentina’s newest musical...

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