May 23rd 2020

Seize the moment: The chance to flatten the climate curve

The world this week

Leaders

A new opportunity to tackle climate change

Countries should seize the moment to flatten the climate curve

The pandemic shows how hard it will be to decarbonise—and creates an opportunity

The next stage of covid-19

Lifting lockdowns: the when, why and how

They are blunt instruments that can cause immense harm. Time to be more discriminating

Semiconductors

America is determined to sink Huawei

A new escalation in the tech conflict illustrates the limits of American power

No bail-outs without representation

Malaysia needs a legitimate government to fight covid-19

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin must prove he has a majority

Big pharma is having a good crisis

Drug innovation is back in fashion

Big pharma is no longer the villain

Letters

On solitude, investors, electric cars, Yemen, Labour, Einstein, three points

Letters to the editor

Briefing

The other crisis

Can covid help flatten the climate curve?

Arriving at a time of change, the pandemic could bring forward the fossil-fuel peak

Never let a crisis go to waste

The pressure to make the post-covid rebound green

A matter of opportunities and costs

Fighting climate change

The world urgently needs to expand its use of carbon prices

But doing so could provoke another trade war

If a tree falls

Carbon offsetting is essential to tackling climate change

If the world is to achieve net-zero emissions, then offsets are part of the plan

Asia

Lockdown and out

India’s economy has suffered even more than most

Muhyiddin’s mess

Malaysia’s shaky government dodges a no-confidence motion

Unscathed but scathing

Japan is not rallying around its prime minister

Titles all round

Afghanistan’s two rival presidents reach a deal

Barley barney and beef beef

China punishes Australia for promoting an inquiry into covid-19

Floating confinement

Why the Philippines is a magnet for idled cruise ships

Banyan

Vietnam’s secretive Communist Party embarks on a leadership transition

China

Three’s a crowd

Donald Trump wants China to join a nuclear-weapons pact

Brown elephants

A glut of new coal-fired power stations endangers China’s green ambitions

Chaguan

Educational freedom is under assault in Hong Kong

United States

To hell with experts

How the world’s premier public-health agency was handcuffed

Attention deficit disorder

Whatever happened to Black Lives Matter?

Squad goals

Donald Trump’s favourite freshmen face primaries

Sunday slump

The virus is accelerating dechurching in America

Jesus is not his vaccine

Francis Collins on science and faith

A boog’s life

Why some protesters in America wear Hawaiian shirts

Lexington

Joe Biden’s good pandemic

Middle East & Africa

Ahead of the covid curve

Egypt chose a looser lockdown. Its economy is still in crisis

A bizarre bazaar

Why Iran has the world’s best-performing stockmarket

West Bank job

How fast will Israel’s new government proceed with annexation?

A genocide suspect faces trial

Félicien Kabuga, Africa’s most wanted man, is arrested

No-frills education

Trust, slavery and the African School of Economics

The Americas

Betting on black

Nothing can shake AMLO’s fossil-fuel fixation

Birth pangs

Latin America ponders how to fight “obstetric violence”

Bello

Latin America’s economic plight is getting worse

Europe

Anatomy of lies

Russia’s covid-19 outbreak is far worse than the Kremlin admits

Who will pay for the pandemic?

The Merkel-Macron plan to bail out Europe is surprisingly ambitious

Empty beaches

Will tourists come to sunny Spain this year?

Sami difference

Sweden’s reindeer-herding Sami take back control

Charlemagne

The wizards of Luxembourg

Britain

Peak capital

London may have gone into a covid-accelerated decline

Grand houses

Britain’s palaces and stately homes are empty

The great land grab

Walkers and cyclists are using the covid-19 crisis to swipe road space

Unwinding the National Covid Service

Why the NHS will not be back to normal for a very long time

Not so burdensome

As debt soars, the cost of servicing it keeps falling

Politics

The pandemic is dividing Britons, not uniting them

International

The great reversal

Covid-19 is undoing years of progress in curbing global poverty

Business

Immaculate misconceptions

America’s latest salvo against Huawei is aimed at chipmaking in China

Born again

SoftBank is a big beneficiary of the Fed’s pandemic response

Elephants in the room

India Inc’s profits increasingly belong to a tiny clutch of companies

A nimble beast

Walmart ekes out an edge in groceries during the pandemic

Bartleby

Zoomers, zeros and Gen Z

Schumpeter

Farewell for now to a golden age of drinking

Finance & economics

Raid on the piggy banks

Sovereign-wealth funds face lean years

Trading places

A memo to candidates for the WTO’s next boss

Buttonwood

Why you need to read Jane Austen to appreciate perpetual bonds

All work and no play

Tracking the economic recovery

Borrower beware

Why interest rates are so high in Africa

Free exchange

Should the Fed cut rates below zero?

Schools brief

Not-so-slow burn

The world’s energy system must be transformed completely

Science & technology

To each according to his need

The risk of severe covid-19 is not uniform

Suffer the little children

Thoughts that the young are not much affected by SARS-CoV-2 look wrong

Solar’s new power

New solar cells extract more energy from sunshine

Books & arts

The lives of others

Diaries written in adversity can be a source of solace

The camera always lies

“No Filter” chronicles the rise of Instagram

Ice-cold cases

Investigating the mysterious appeal of Scandi noir

The ballad of Malcolm and Martin

A twin biography retells the story of the civil-rights movement

Home Entertainment

Confined in prison, Marco Polo roamed across the world

Home Entertainment

Trio sonatas are the ideal music for the lockdown

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Forecasting covid-19

Early projections of covid-19 in America underestimated its severity

Obituary

Gonna have some fun tonight