The Economist | Independent journalism
Red-letter night | Labour is on course for a huge victory in the British election
An exit poll points to a collapse in the Tory vote
Leaders
Why Biden must withdraw
The president and his party portray themselves as the saviours of democracy. Their actions say otherwise
Leaders
How spies should use technology
Digital tools are transforming spycraft, but won’t replace human agents
The world in brief
An exit poll indicated that the Labour Party had won a landslide victory in Britain’s general election, as universally expected...
Reform UK, the party of Nigel Farage, Britain’s perennial populist, was projected to win 13 seats...
In a radio interview President Joe Biden admitted that he “screwed up” a recent television debate against Donald Trump, but said he would “get back up”...
Jair Bolsonaro, a former president of Brazil, was indicted by federal police...
Why Chinese banks are now vanishing
The state is struggling to deal with troubled institutions
Lexington: Joe Biden is fooling only himself
A president who prides himself on the common touch is insulting everyone’s common sense
The world’s richest countries in 2024
Our annual ranking compares economies in three different ways
New yeast strains can produce untapped flavours of lager
One Chilean hybrid has a spicy taste, with hints of clove
Video
This week
The most important political stories this week
Joe Biden admits that he “screwed up” his debate, Ursula von der Leyen is elected for a second term as president of the European Commission—and more
The most important business stories this week
Boeing agrees to buy Spirit AeroSystems, Japan’s Topix stockmarket index closes at a new high—and more
KAL’s cartoon
A lighter look at the week’s events
Letters to the editor
On solar power, the New York Times bestseller list, Metallica, football, presidential debates
More on Britain’s election
Keir Starmer should be Britain’s next prime minister
Why Labour must form the next government
Our new “mega-poll” gives Labour an expected majority of 280 seats
It puts the Conservatives on a record-low 76 seats, with the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK making gains
Nukes and King Charles—but no door key
The first 24 hours for a new British prime minister are odd, and busy
These charts show how Britain’s Tory party lost its way
Plus, a few things it got right
World news
The next terrifying war: Israel v Hizbullah
It would feature kamikaze drones, mass blackouts and the largest missile barrage in history
A Kenyan-led security mission finally starts to arrive in Haiti
But can it make a difference?
Meet the victors in Africa’s coup belt
They are militaristic, nationalistic and keen to cut a deal
China is struck by floods and drought—at the same time
A looming water crisis threatens everything from data centres to farms
Business, finance and economics
What happened to the artificial-intelligence revolution?
So far the technology has had almost no economic impact
Japan’s mind-bending bento-box economics
The paradox of red-hot labour markets, falling demand and rising prices
What next for Amazon as it turns 30?
From Prime Video to AWS, the e-empire is stitching together its disparate parts
Why everyone should think like a lawyer
The unloved profession has a lot to teach managers
More on America’s election
1843 magazine | America’s gerontocrats are more radical than they look
A conservative writer argues that his country’s rulers exhibit the vices of youth, not old age
The meaning of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court victory
His lawyers’ attempt to delay the election-subversion case worked
Donald Trump has finally got it right about the January 6th insurrectionists
They were “warriors”—that’s the problem
Trump v Biden: who’s ahead in the polls?
The Economist is tracking the race to be America’s next president
Summer reads
Why travel guidebooks are not going anywhere
Despite predictions that the internet would kill them
The economics of the tennis v pickleball contest
Don’t hate the new players—or the new game
Roxie, one of China’s few lesbian bars, closes its doors
Yet another sign that life is getting harder for gay people in the country
Books (and films) about the joy and pain of music festivals
From Bethel to the Bahamas
Stories most read by subscribers
Featured read
Hollywood enters a frugal new era
As austerity hits Tinseltown, rivalries are giving way to alliances
The Israel-Hamas war
Is the American-built pier in Gaza useful or a fiasco?
The Economist went to see
Is a Palestinian state a fantasy?
Amid war in Gaza, the prospect is at once more relevant than ever and more distant
Israel’s northern border is ablaze
Can it fight Hamas and Hizbullah simultaneously?
Hamas and Israel are still far apart over a ceasefire deal
For all America’s optimism, the two sides look fundamentally irreconcilable
The war in Ukraine
Ukraine’s war has created millions of broken families
Children and wives have been apart from their fathers and husbands for more than two years
Ukraine has a month to avoid default
Lending to a borrower at war entails an additional gamble: that it will win
Death and destruction in a Russian city
Russians in the border city of Belgorod have become victims too in the war Vladimir Putin launched against Ukraine
Russia’s latest crime in Mariupol: stealing property
It is seizing homes in order to consolidate control
Edition: July 6th 2024
No way to run a country
The state we’re in
A tour of Britain—and of the past 14 years of Conservative rule
Imagining a war in Lebanon
It would feature kamikaze drones, mass blackouts and the largest missile barrage in history
In its prime: Amazon at 30
Three factors will define its next decade
Technology Quarterly: Spycraft
And so has the world in which they are used,
Technology Quarterly: July 6th 2024
Watching the watchers
Tools of the spy trade have changed and so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi
The tools of global spycraft have changed
Ubiquitous technical surveillance has made spying more difficult
Signals intelligence has become a cyber-activity
Sometimes the old ways of espionage are the best
Artificial intelligence can speed-sort satellite photos
Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money
Sources and acknowledgments
