Nov 25th 2023

Climate report: Some progress, must try harder

The world this week

Leaders

Must try harder

Progress on climate change has not been fast enough, but it has been real

And the world needs to learn from it

Climbing high

How to thrive in a fractured world

Lessons from the ambitious ascent of the United Arab Emirates

An election in Buenos Aires

In Argentina Javier Milei faces an economic crisis

The radical libertarian is taking over a country on the brink

OpenChaos

The fallout from the weirdness at OpenAI

Sam Altman is set to return, but the episode holds some disturbing lessons

One cheer for Jeremy Hunt

Britain’s autumn statement got business taxes right

It also cynically handed out an illusory windfall

Letters

On secondary legislation, tariffs, interest rates, realtors, Costa Rica, the Sagrada Família, James Bond, flying lawn chairs

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

COP28: climate finance

Mark Carney argues that finance needs to go where the emissions are

COP28: climate action and trade

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says open trade is crucial for decarbonisation

Briefing

Port in a storm

The messier the world gets, the more the UAE seems to thrive

For a tiny country, it has outsize influence

United States

Infrastructure weak

Spending on infrastructure has fallen in real terms in America

Mexican airwaves

Univision, America’s Spanish news giant, reaches out to Donald Trump

Just a small-town lab

An accidental discovery in rural California raised biosecurity fears

Abortion laws in Georgia

How confusing fetal-personhood laws in America affect hospitals

X, rated

What survey data reveal about antisemitism in America

Deus ex constitutione

Does a civil-war-era ban on insurrectionists apply to Donald Trump?

Lexington

The (sort of) isolationist case for backing Ukraine

The Americas

From cosplayer to president

Javier Milei will be Argentina’s first libertarian president

Cry me a river

Severe drought is constraining the Panama Canal

Blow up

Brazil’s biggest drug gang has gone global

Asia

Taking wing

India is seeing a massive aviation boom

Et tu, India?

Did America thwart an Indian assassination plot?

Spy satellites

Will North Korea’s new spy satellite make the region safer?

Money for nothing

Thailand’s new government is handing out cash

IPEF MIA

America’s crumbling trade initiative in Asia

China

Fuzzy numbers, safer streets

China says it has achieved a miraculously low-crime society

Eyes everywhere

China’s enormous surveillance state is still growing

When China shook

A year on from the white-paper protests, China looks much different

Chaguan

Why Xi Jinping sounds friendlier to America

Middle East & Africa

A break in the bloodshed

Israel strikes a hostage deal, but says the Gaza war isn’t over

Israel’s non-Jewish minorities

How the Gaza war affects Israel’s minorities in different ways

It’s in the posts

Why African businesses take a DIY approach to selling online

The last outpost

Will Chad be the next Western ally in Africa to fall?

Europe

Right turn

Geert Wilders’s election win leaves the Dutch in an awful quandary

Cross-Rhine rivals

Why German bosses are heaping unexpected praise on France

Hidden battle

Russia is starting to make its superiority in electronic warfare count

Life in containers

Turkey’s sluggish post-earthquake reconstruction

Charlemagne

Tyrant, liberator, warmonger, bureaucrat: the meaning of Napoleon

Britain

Mixed picture

Britain’s chancellor offers tax cuts and fiscal trickery

Flat-lining

Jeremy Hunt wants to improve Britain’s public-sector productivity

Old people and young firms

The government tries to unlock growth capital for British firms

Personal therapy

The world’s first pathway for individually designed drugs

The price is finally right

The National Health Service has a new drugs deal

Asylum and the law

Is Britain’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda salvageable?

Saving your bacon

Britain’s native farm animals can be rarer than giant pandas

Bagehot

What kind of legacy does Rishi Sunak want to leave behind?

Special report

The lost heart of net zero

Carbon-dioxide removal needs more attention

St Augustine’s climate policy

The temptations of deferred removals

On the other hand...

The many prices of carbon dioxide

Thy axe shall harm it not

Trees alone will not save the world

All the myriad ways

Carbon-dioxide-removal options are multiplying

The carbon economy

A net-zero world needs new markets and institutions

Business

OpenAI v CloseAI

Sam Altman’s return marks a new phase for OpenAI

Non-profit motives

Inside OpenAI’s weird governance structure

Soap power

ReelShort is the latest Chinese export to conquer America

The southern strategy

Why Chinese companies are flocking to Mexico

Sun, sea and lots of sand

Riyadh Air is betting on a tourist surge to Saudi Arabia

Bartleby

How not to motivate your employees

Investment screaming

Every country wants its own investment-screening regime

Schumpeter

The many contradictions of Sam Altman

Finance & economics

The sinews of war

Inside Hamas’s sprawling financial empire

Walking on air

Why house prices have risen once again

Buttonwood

Investors are going loco for CoCos

Economies of scales

The obesity pay gap is worse than previously thought

Ask again later

How will America’s economy fare in 2024? Don’t ask a forecaster

A day late and a dollar short

The rich world claims it has paid its overdue climate debts

Do not pass go

Another crypto boss falls

Free exchange

How to save China’s economy

Science & technology

Dimming the sun

Solar geoengineering is becoming a respectable idea

Big rockets and big rivers

SpaceX tests Starship, and prepares to face down Amazon

Explaining the wave function

A new way to predict ship-killing rogue waves

Culture

Poll position

Why non-white voters are abandoning the Democratic Party

One for the Monet

Claude Monet is celebrated in a colourful new biography

There’s no place like home

The likelihood of living on Mars soon is as remote as Pluto

Red light, green light

What “Squid Game: The Challenge” reveals about the state of TV

Johnson

Euphemism and exaggeration are both dangers to language

Watch the box

The Economist’s pick of the best television shows of 2023

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

The Economist explains

The A to Z of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Obituary

The fastest gun in the west