An ethnic militia with daring tactics is humiliating Myanmar’s army
Apr 18th 2020IN RAKHINE AND Chin states, in the far west of Myanmar, bullets fly and villages burn. Dead bodies lie slumped in ditches. These “clearance operations”, as the Burmese government calls them, evoke those of 2017, when the army drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, a Muslim ethnic group, from their villages, killing and…
What South Africa learned from AIDS
Apr 18th 2020JOHANNESBURGEditor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hubIN ALMOST EVERY year of the past two decades more than a…
The American west’s drought is its second-worst for 12 centuries
Apr 18th 2020THE SOUTH-WEST of the United States, together with adjacent parts of Mexico across the Rio Grande, is one of the driest parts of the North American continent. But, over the past two decades, even that expected dryness has been taken to the limit. According to Park Williams, who works at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty…
Covid-19 could lead to the return of inflation—eventually
Apr 18th 2020Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hubINFLATION IN THE rich world resembles a fairy-tale beast. Older members of…
The case for emerging-market stocks
Apr 18th 2020Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hubYOU KNOW by now, if you’ve been paying attention, that the coronavirus…
Wall Street prepares for a wave of loan losses
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hubIF DOCTORS AND nurses are on the front-line of the health crisis caused by…
Big parts of the Great Barrier Reef are dying
Apr 18th 2020OVER THE southern hemisphere’s summer, mercifully now at an end, Australia burned under a pitiless sun. Bush fires down the continent’s eastern flank consumed 46m acres of countryside, destroying homes, taking lives and driving rare animals towards extinction. To many Australians, the satellite pictures showing huge plumes of smoke drifting off to the…
A landslide for South Korea’s ruling party in parliamentary elections
THE YOUNG man outside the polling station was adamant. “Of course it was right to hold these elections. It’s our basic right,” said Kim Su-ho, a 24-year-old voter in Seoul, the capital. “We’re not like Europe or America where they failed to slow the spread. There was no reason to postpone them.” His fellow South…
A second wave of covid-19 hits northern Japan
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hubPOINTING TO A chart showing a flattened curve, Suzuki Naomichi, the governor of Hokkaido,…
Asia’s workers can’t afford to stay at home
Apr 18th 2020DELHI AND SINGAPOREEditor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hubBANGLADESH WENT into lockdown on March 26th, but that didn’t…