How World Bank leaders put pressure on staff to alter a global index
THE WORLD BANK’S Doing Business rankings, which are followed closely by leaders in China, India and elsewhere, are supposed…
Middle Eastern foes are giving diplomacy a shot
Sep 18th 2021DUBAI AND ISTANBULIT WAS A surprising choice for a summer holiday. On August 18th Tahnoon bin Zayed, the national-security…
Is China already the world’s most dominant economy?
IN 2010, WHEN President Barack Obama welcomed his Chinese counterpart to a summit in Washington, DC, he greeted him with a handshake…
South Asia’s non-binary communities worry about losing their identity
Sep 18th 2021IN MARCH, WHEN Tashnuva Anan Shishir appeared on Bangladeshi television screens, she created history as the country’s…
What next for Islamists in the Arab world?
THE STRICT Islamism of the Taliban may be back in Afghanistan, but peaceful Islamists in the Arab world have struggled of late….
The travails of teaching Arabs their own language
Sep 18th 2021GOD, SAYS the Koran, chose Arabic for his revelation because it is easy to understand. But many of the world’s…
How America should spend on child care
Sep 18th 2021UNLIKE MOST rich European countries, America lacks a coherent public child-care regime. But it has come surprisingly…
Labour’s share in national income is both over- and under-explained
Sep 18th 2021THE IDEA that the spoils of the modern economy are unfairly distributed has become part of public discourse in the…
Australia’s states are asserting themselves
Sep 18th 2021ACROSS MUCH of Asia, the pandemic has given national leaders an excuse to unleash authoritarian instincts—think…
India’s pupils have been hard hit by extended school closures
AS COVID-19 MEASURES relax across the world, nothing brings quite so much relief as the reopening of schools. For India’s 320m…