The shortage economy

Make me over

Pakistan got its way in Afghanistan. Now what?

Tentacular spectacular

South Koreans are bemused by the global success of “Squid Game”

Shadowed by violence

A Rohingya leader’s murder highlights rising insecurity in refugee camps

Banyan

Asian countries are at last abandoning zero-covid strategies

Too close for comfort

China is ratcheting up military pressure on Taiwan

Bells and whistles

Artists and craftsmen try to preserve the sounds of old Beijing

Chaguan

A Chinese vision of free trade

Groundhog days

Why can’t America quit flirting with financial ruin?

Piketty lines

The incomes of America’s poorest are growing faster than those of its richest

Whistle while you work

Why the latest series of Facebook leaks is more politically potent

Polarisation explorers

America’s political scientists are worried about “lethal partisanship”

From the ashes

Chicago re-examines its origin story 150 years after the great fire

Droning on

President Biden is weighing how extensively to use drones

Lexington

Disciplined Democrats look likely to pass Joe Biden’s domestic agenda

Abiy against the world

Ethiopia is losing friends and influence

Bodies in the fields

Both sides in Ethiopia’s conflict stand accused of war crimes

Liaisons douloureuses

Emmanuel Macron hosts a different sort of Africa summit

When nine-to-five is a stretch

Gulf states are trying to increase private employment

Boycott the boycott

Iraq’s election could be worthless if few turn out to vote

The Latinobarómetro poll

Latin American democracy is in poor but surprisingly stable health

Shrinking balls, shrinking interest

A venerable Canadian sport is wasting away

No me pises

Javier Milei, a libertarian, may be elected to Argentina’s congress

Bosporus blues

A $15bn new canal for Istanbul

Rattling the right

The Northern League and the Brothers of Italy both wobble

The weight of silence

The French Catholic church acknowledges a staggering pattern of sexual abuse

Embarrassing riches

The “Pandora papers” ensnare a Czech leader and a Dutch minister

Charlemagne

The European Union should not give up on enlargement

Flattened

Wages are rising in Britain, but so are prices and taxes

Only the best

The government wants to boost British startups through immigration

In the spotlight

What Sarah Everard’s murder means for the Metropolitan Police

Help wanted

Britain’s welfare state offers little protection for workers

Street lighting

The lamps are going out all over Britain

Treedemic

Britain’s trees are being felled by diseases

Bagehot

The Tories are deadly serious about levelling up

Smart buys

The pandemic will spur the worldwide growth of private tutoring

World trade

The new order of trade

Trade law

A fraying system

Precautionism

In search of resilience

Labour rights

The urge to protect

The environment

Making trade greener

The new rules

A changed world

Sources and acknowledgments

A new Chinese supermodel

Shein exemplifies a new style of Chinese multinational

Electric blue and yellow

Volvo’s IPO will keep it ahead in the electric-car race

Bartleby

How to write a great out-of-office reply

A golden-ish age

The IPO of GlobalFoundries is perfectly timed

Mexican wave

Mexico is finally seeing a startup bonanza

Berlin walls and windows

Germany’s biggest developer will be under pressure in Berlin

Schumpeter

What if firms were forced to pay for frying the planet

Stagflation sensation

Is the world economy going back to the 1970s?

Can’t live with them, can’t live without them

The age of fossil-fuel abundance is dead

Capital ideas

Companies cast off their reluctance to invest

#Mintthecoin

Could a $1trn coin end America’s debt-ceiling showdown?

Green party

A wave of green government bonds is flooding markets

Buttonwood

A different approach to investing in developing countries

Free exchange

Does anyone actually understand inflation?

The 2021 Nobel science prizes

This year’s Nobel prizes brought both delight and disbelief

Thermoelectric heat transfer

A novel way to heat and cool things

Ready to roll

A malaria vaccine is approved by the World Health Organisation

Sea slugs and chloroplasts

One of nature’s strangest symbioses gives up its secrets

New from the solar system

The Moon and Mars give up more secrets

The world after the pandemic

Two new books assess the geopolitical lessons of covid-19

The Russia option

How an English miner’s daughter rose to work in the White House

The history of science

A new biography explains the genius of John von Neumann

Virtue’s reward

An advocate of sustainable capitalism explains how it’s done

Literary lives

Colm Toibin’s new novel brings Thomas Mann to life

Noblesse oblige

The best way to win a Nobel is to get nominated by another laureate

Coeur de lion

Obituary: Bernard Tapie, a colourful and controversial French businessman