Aug 14th 2021

China’s attack on tech

The world this week

Leaders

Unruly response

Xi Jinping’s assault on tech will change China’s trajectory

It is likely to prove self-defeating

Last chance

It might still be possible to save Afghanistan

But America is refusing to try

Open up

Most covid-19 travel restrictions should be scrapped

The rules are ineffective, illiberal and often useless

Not all about the carbon

Why curbing methane emissions will help fight climate change

It's a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and should be easier to control

The race to replace Angela Merkel

German voters deserve a more serious election campaign

A milquetoast contest fails to confront the hard choices facing Europe’s biggest economy

Letters

On risk and vaccines, science fiction, climate change, lending, beer, rainfall

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Automatic for the people

China’s future economic potential hinges on its productivity

Can the government boost it?

United States

Bridge and tunnel

Joe Biden’s splurge on infrastructure moves a step closer

Oye, Cuomo va

Andrew Cuomo protests his innocence and resigns anyway

Hashing ambiguous

A 38-year-old charity will be integrated into Apple’s newest operating system

Getting schooled

Texas offers an early case study on getting children back to school while covid-19 is spreading

Delta dawns

Vaccine mandates are spreading

Lexington

Green and black

The Americas

One city, two worlds

Rio de Janeiro asks why its cops kill so many black people

A small step away from socialism

Cuba’s government approves small and medium-sized enterprises

Asia

Making the best of a bad situation

Afghanistan’s neighbours are preparing for life with the Taliban

Pro-God, anti-Taliban

Big-city Afghans are defiant in the face of advancing jihadists

The ties that bind

The release from prison of Samsung’s de facto boss raises eyebrows

A pretty good racquet

How Indonesia became the home of badminton

Banyan

Democracy is decaying in a growing number of Asian polities

China

Production-line poets

How Chinese factory-workers express their views on life

Middle East & Africa

Cabo Delgado

Why Mozambique invited foreign troops to fight its jihadists

Crude business

Ghana plans to buy back oil licences no one wants

Jihadists on all sides

Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s new president, asks for help

Crime and government

A fraudster’s confession rebounds on Nigeria’s top cop

Of coups and jabs

A flood of vaccines for Tunisia as foreigners vie for influence

Europe

After Mutti

Angela Merkel’s successor could be left, right or Green

1789 and all that

Why so many French people fear dictatorship and civil war

Unwelcome Discovery

Poland’s proposed media rules threaten press freedom

Swish in Sardinia

On Italy’s Costa Smeralda, the megayachts are back

Slavic sceptics

With just 15% fully jabbed, Bulgaria is giving away vaccine shots

Knocking on the 27’s door

Six Balkan nations keep trying to join the European Union

Charlemagne

Two flights explain EU asylum policy

Britain

In trouble with the law

Britain’s courts are in a mess

Parks and recriminations

The battle for north London’s public space

Seeing stars

The British government’s unwanted higher-education boom

On the wrong track

HS2’s extension and the paradox of infrastructure investment

International trade

Brexit Britain wants to liberalise trade with poor countries

Nothing too gruesome

Britain’s economy: less scarred by covid-19 than had been feared

The petrol party

Boris Johnson’s strained love affair with the motorist

International

Getting off the ground

Travel chaos will last well beyond summer

Business

Chinese capitalism

What tech does China want?

Pharmaceuticals

American biotechnology is booming

Bartleby

Flexibility is the key to success

Loser takes all

The Olympics is a ratings flop. Advertisers don’t care

Wiping the slate

One way to make Europe more like Silicon Valley

Schumpeter

Can Instacart reconfigure America’s grocery wars?

Finance & economics

A curse on both your houses

Will the rich world’s worker deficit last?

Beatable prices

America’s inflation scare becomes less menacing

Bygones are bygones

India consigns its tax time-machine to the past

SPACs and the City

Britain’s regulator makes a play for SPAC listings

Buttonwood

How the delisting of Chinese firms on American exchanges might play out

A quiet giant

A glimpse into Japan’s understated financial heft in South-East Asia

Free exchange

A new theory suggests that day-to-day trading has lasting effects on stockmarkets

Schools brief

Biology brief

How organisms are organised

Science & technology

A new reality

The IPCC delivers its starkest warning yet about climate change

It that cannot be named

Geoengineering is conspicuously absent from the IPCC’s report

Books & arts

Buy the ticket, take the ride

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” still bites, 50 years on

Mental illness, art and the Nazis

A doctor recognised his psychiatric patients’ art. Hitler disagreed

Women in sport

Billie Jean King was a champion on and off the court

Psychological fiction

A tricksy tale of paranoia and suspicion

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Simply the best

By the numbers, Lionel Messi is European football’s best scorer ever

Obituary

Puccini with lunch-trays