Apr 30th 2020

The 90% economy

The world this week

Leaders

The 90% economy

Life after lockdowns

It will be hard in ways that are difficult to imagine today

The kids are not all right

When easing lockdowns, governments should open schools first

The costs of keeping them closed are too high

West-coast shuffle

Big tech is thriving in the midst of the recession

Its centre of gravity is shifting, too

State finances

Congress, not the Fed, should bail out America’s state and local governments

The federal government can provide disaster relief without underwriting profligacy

The origins of the pandemic

Where did the novel coronavirus come from?

China’s opacity has allowed dangerous conspiracy theories to flourish

Letters

On testing, stimulus, the three-day week, ancient Athens, coughing

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Not quite all there

The 90% economy that lockdowns will leave behind

It will not just be smaller, it will feel strange

Next in line

Which emerging markets are in most financial peril?

Our ranking of 66 countries shows which are in distress, and which are relatively safe

Asia

Oh leader, where art thou?

North Korea’s dictator has disappeared

Shake-work scheme

Japan’s new industry: turning down jobs

Suffering from a stitch

Bangladesh cannot afford to close its garment factories

Banyan

Many of Asia’s Muslims are celebrating Ramadan in the normal way

When make-up is essential

The reflexive sexism of Malaysia’s bureaucrats

The legitimate use of farce

Some Asian governments are fighting covid-19 with fun

China

Spring freeze

Millions of Chinese students brace themselves for joblessness

Tilting the scales

Covid-19 has put pangolins in the spotlight

Chaguan

China plans to crush new covid outbreaks with tough measures

United States

Election monitoring

We spent the lockdown sorting American voters into 380,000 distinct groups

Battling to be American

The path to citizenship for those who put on American uniform has narrowed

The house loses

America is getting worse at building new homes

Slaughterhouse dive

In America, the virus threatens a meat industry that is too concentrated

A multitude of drops

America’s makers and tinkerers turn their hands to PPE

Lexington

Conservatism in the crisis

Middle East & Africa

Lungu’s largesse

Zambia was already a case study in how not to run an economy

Technical foul

How Sudan’s warlords buy their gun trucks

Leaders and misleaders

Some African politicians risk spreading covid through quackery

The war within a war

Separatists and Yemen’s government are at it again

A warlord in trouble

Khalifa Haftar is losing ground and lashing out in Libya

Reform, Saudi style

Saudi Arabia stops flogging

The Americas

Bust-up in Brasília

Jair Bolsonaro’s dangerous divorce

The welcome mat frays

Colombia cools on Venezuelan refugees

Bello

Choosing between livelihoods and lives in Latin America

Europe

Infectious suspicion

Do low-trust societies do better in a pandemic?

Fighting microbe with mike

Christian Drosten, Germany’s covid-19 explainer-in-chief

In need of assistance

An interview with Luigi Di Maio

Privacy be damned

Some countries want central databases for contact-tracing apps

A conviction politician

A former president of Georgia tries to shake up Ukraine

How not to hand over to your successor

A scandal in squeaky-clean Norway

Charlemagne

Emmanuel Macron ditches Jupiter for other gods

Britain

Time to think small

The government ponders bailing out universities

Life under lockdown

A nation of gardeners

Local government

Councils’ outgoings are rocketing and revenues collapsing

Scotland

Coronavirus has made Scottish independence even less likely

And then there were 18,000

An army of sleuths could help Britain emerge from lockdown

Rivalling the Blitz

Covid-19 is killing Londoners at a faster rate than German bombs did

Redundancies

British Airways’ huge job cuts

Brexit

The problematic Northern Ireland protocol

Reforming government

Tony Blair is having a covid moment

International

No more pencils, no more books

Closing schools for covid-19 does lifelong harm and widens inequality

The classless society

School closures: lessons from the Ebola pandemic

Think of the children

The young seem to be less likely to catch or pass on covid-19

Business

Flowerbeds of enterprise

Private companies have put down strong roots in China

Bartleby

Imagine the post-pandemic misery of business travel

Low resolution

Online annual meetings may favour managers over shareholders

Despondent DAX

The covid-19 crisis exposes the frailties of Germany’s biggest firms

Schumpeter

What is weighing on Samsung?

Finance & economics

Averting nightmare on Main Street

Politicians in America and Europe scramble to help small firms

Big bucks

America’s large firms can count on generous government support

To good effect

Melissa Dell wins the John Bates Clark medal

Less than zero

America’s cities and states face a cash crunch

Buttonwood

How to detect business fraud

Free exchange

Why the unemployed in America could face a lost decade

Schools brief

Projections of the future

How modelling articulates the science of climate change

Science & technology

The origin of covid-19

The pieces of the puzzle of covid-19’s origin are coming to light

Covid-19

Leaving lockdown means understanding immune responses to the virus

Covid-19

Smokers seem less likely than non-smokers to fall ill with covid-19

Books & arts

All the lonely people

Solitude has always been both a blessing and a curse

Order and peril

Remembering Romek Marber, a master visual craftsman

Johnson

The real reason to study the classics

Home Entertainment

Travel to a land of “sun and dust” with “The Leopard”

Home Entertainment

The comfort of old-time baseball broadcasts

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Before their time

Would most covid-19 victims have died soon, without the virus?

Obituary

Through crack and crag