The world this week

Politics
Business
KAL’s cartoon
This week’s covers
Leaders


Von der Leyen, Meloni and Le Pen
The three women who will shape Europe
At a crucial moment they encapsulate the dilemma of how to handle populism

Revolt of the reasonable
The pro-choice movement that could help Joe Biden win
A backlash against abortion bans is energising the middle ground in America

Prudent pensioners, profligate politicians
What penny-pinching baby-boomers mean for the world economy
They are saving like never before. But even that may not bring interest rates down

Eastern promise
Japan and South Korea are getting friendlier. At last
As the world economy fragments, two export powerhouses see the virtue of chumminess

Mark a cross
Incompetence or opacity: the choice facing British voters
The first week of the election campaign points to a failure of political competition

Letters

On Singapore, Arab armies, China, romantasy, immigration, car names
Letters to the editor
By Invitation


Artificial intelligence
AI firms mustn’t govern themselves, say ex-members of OpenAI’s board
Artificial intelligence
OpenAI board members respond to a warning by former members
Briefing


Abortion and politics
The undoing of Roe v Wade has created a mighty political movement
The power of women with clipboards
Asia


Diplomatic inertia
Is America giving Narendra Modi an easy ride?
A protest against parliament
Some Taiwanese worry that their lawmakers may sell them out to China
Banyan
Want to stop a third world war? Pick up the phone
Monetising minerals
Australia joins the industrial arms race
Four legs good
Bans on dog meat sweep across Asia
China


Beware the work team
The evolution of forced labour in Xinjiang
Signs of decline
Has China reached peak emissions?
Controlling behaviour
Hong Kong convicts 14 pro-democracy activists
Chaguan
How China uses Russia to chew up the UN
United States


The 3% party
What are America’s Libertarians for?
Budget-modelling wars
Fiscal nerds determine the fate of legislation in America
Howzat meets fuhgeddaboudit
Will Americans be bowled over by cricket—again?
Be prepared
America could face its most active hurricane season ever
Gone with the wind
A tornado destroys a barn—an Economist favourite—in Wisconsin
No joke
The side-effects of the TikTok tussle

Middle East & Africa


Occupation and responsibility
Who is responsible for feeding Gaza?
Horrors in Rafah
Outrage at a strike in Rafah is unlikely to change policy
Last stand in Darfur
A battle rages for a key city in Sudan’s ravaged western region
Give peace a chance
A Sudanese gathering outside the country proposes a third way
Buzz kill
New fronts are opening in the war against malaria
The Americas


Mexico’s moment
Mexico’s next president can reset relations with the United States
Influencer and president
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s mañaneras boost his presidency
Double trouble
Bolivia’s left wing is at war with itself
Jaded nation
Canada’s jade mines boomed on Chinese demand. Now that’s over
Europe


Europe votes
The rise of the hard right threatens Europe’s political stability
Too sizeable to shun
Hard-right populists are pushing their way into the mainstream
From Uffizi to office?
The Brothers of Italy take the fight to Florence
Captive in the Caucasus
Georgia’s government cosies up to Russia
No way back
Ukraine’s desperate draft-dodgers drown in the river of death
Charlemagne
Ceci n’est pas un divorce: why surging separatism won’t break Belgium
Britain


Prospective MPs
Generation K: Keir Starmer’s cohort of Labour candidates
Outlier or omen?
Half of Northern Irish patients wait over a year for treatment
Lights, camera…inaction!
Sir Keir Starmer meets the public. Sort of
Limitations of statute
Brexit is the only big legacy of the 2019-24 parliament
Not a postcode lottery
The seats where Labour is concentrating its campaign firepower
In the box, and on it
Footballer, broadcaster, podcast mogul: the career of Gary Lineker
Bagehot
The British election is becoming an episode of mob justice
International


Control yourself!
Is your rent ever going to fall?
Business


Flyover country
Japanese businesses are trapped between America and China
Upping the X ante
Can Elon Musk’s xAI take on OpenAI?
Prêt-à-partir
Can Benetton be patched up?
Bartleby
How to write the perfect CV
Back, with a vengeance
ExxonMobil rediscovers its swagger
Schumpeter
The soldiers of the silicon supply chain are worried
Finance & economics


Live a little
Baby-boomers are loaded. Why are they so stingy?
Gift horse
Foreign investors are rejecting Indian stocks
Stepping on spiky grass
Xi Jinping’s surprising new source of economic advice
A high-interest-rate phenomenon
Young collectors are fuelling a boom in Basquiat-backed loans
In the shadows
OPEC heavyweights are cheating on their targets
Buttonwood
When to sell your stocks
Free exchange
Why any estimate of the cost of climate change will be flawed
Science & technology


Of mice and menses
Progress on the science of menstruation—at last
Flying bugs
Hordes of cicadas are emerging simultaneously in America
Drone warfare
Many Ukrainian drones have been disabled by Russian jamming
Avian flu
A second human case of bird flu in America is raising alarm
Culture


Beaches like no other
Remembering D-Day, as a new war rages in Europe
Bad sport?
Bullfighting is under attack
Braking China
Is time more on America’s or China’s side?
The booby trap
There is more to breasts than meets the eye
Literary afterlives
A century after his death Franz Kafka is still in the zeitgeist
The Economist reads


The Economist reads
Five of the best books on climbing mountains
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary


Fixing a likeness
June Mendoza captured both the famous and the unknown