The world this week

Politics
Business
The weekly cartoon
This week’s cover
Leaders


The everything drugs
It’s not just obesity. Drugs like Ozempic will change the world
As they become cheaper, they promise to improve billions of lives

Leaders
Elon’s $1m voter
Mr Musk’s scheme to boost Donald Trump is legally questionable and bad for democracy

Status anxiety
The blistering rally in gold augurs ill for the power of the dollar
Central banks are shifting away from the greenback

Criminal justice
Decarceration is the key to better prisons
Britain is not the only rich country that needs a radical change in approach

Making business roar
Time to shake up Asia’s sleepy monopolies
The cosy links between politics and business impose large costs on a dynamic region

Letters

On economics, America, the Chagos Islands, innovation in AI, the Turkic states, Abraham Lincoln, flies
Letters to the editor
Briefing


The Swiss Army knife of jabs
GLP-1s like Ozempic are among the most important drug breakthroughs ever
Their far-reaching potential could transform how chronic diseases are managed
Asia


Getting to know Prabowo
Indonesia’s macho new leader is no “cuddly grandpa”
Prabowo’s plans for nickel
Making nickel is a nightmare. Unless you are Indonesian
South-East Asia’s criminal scams
Suck up to your fake CEO
Himalayan handshake
Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping meet and resolve a border row
Banyan
Japan is remarkably open to AI, but slow to make use of it
China


Decoding America’s election
Ambiguity or madness? Where Harris and Trump stand on China
A long way to go
How China is trying to win back foreign tourists
The last laugh
A female comedian has Chinese men up in arms
United States


Early returns
How to read America’s early-voting numbers
Flooding the polls
Will Hurricane Helene tip the vote in North Carolina?
Fear and voting
Donald Trump’s terrifying closing message
Campaign calculus: Kamala’s camp
Gay voters are smitten with Kamala Harris
Valley fever
A culture of conspiracy haunts Arizona’s elections
Lexington
Kamala Harris’s closing argument
Middle East & Africa


Killing an idea
Do Israel’s assassinations work?
Yahya Sinwar’s death
Yahya Sinwar made Hamas his own fief
Israel’s waiting game
Israel’s leaders are watching America’s election closely
The wages of truth
Mozambique’s ruling party wins a dodgy election
Not so mellow
Gold is booming. So is the dirty business of digging it up
Religion re-rooted
How African churches are keeping the faith alive abroad

The Americas


Much obliged
Millions in the West want mandatory voting. Are they right?
Dwindling prospects
Blackouts in Cuba highlight the island’s extreme energy fragility
Climate change and parasites
The flesh-eating worms devouring cows
Europe


The disrupter-in-chief
Germany’s populist superstar demands peace with Russia
Blood brothers
North Korea is sending thousands of soldiers to help Vladimir Putin
The tightrope walker
Giorgia Meloni would make Machiavelli proud
Country cuisine
The world’s most improbable smash-hit cooking show
Charlemagne
Angela who? Merkel’s legacy looks increasingly terrible
Britain


It’s worse than you think
Britain’s prison service is caught in a doom loop
The Chris Kaba case
How to hold armed police to account in Britain
The most sensible show on earth
Why “The Rest Is Politics”, a British podcast, is a hit
Fur’s aid
Britain is a world leader in pet health care
A construction slowdown
Scotland’s failure to build homes is mainly due to its government
Match postponed
The shortfall in British adoptions
Bagehot
King’s Cross, a miracle in London
International


Launching a currency war in Moscow
Putin’s plan to dethrone the dollar
Business


Earned out?
America’s growing profits are under threat
Dig out your trousers
Are bosses right to insist that workers return to the office?
Tropical depression
South-East Asia’s stodgy conglomerates are holding it back
Pharma frenzy
Competition will make weight-loss drugs better, cheaper and bigger
Down memory lane
Memory chips could be the next bottleneck for AI
Bartleby
How to manage politics in the workplace
Schumpeter
Can Google or Huawei stymie Apple’s march towards $4trn?
Finance & economics


Going for it
What the surging price of gold says about a dangerous world
Wide Atlantic
The West faces new inflation fears
Hunger games
The economics of thinness (Ozempic edition)
Buttonwood
Investors should not fear a stockmarket crash
Economic war
Hizbullah’s sprawling financial empire looks newly vulnerable
Free exchange
How bad are video games for your grades?
Science & technology


Old case files
The study of ancient DNA is helping to solve modern crimes
Buzzing without being buzzed
Why Oriental hornets can’t get drunk
Robocrop
Winemakers are building grape-picking robots
Sunny side up
Perovskite crystals may represent the future of solar power
Culture


Opposing Putin’s tyranny
In a posthumous memoir, Alexei Navalny chronicles his martyrdom
Sexy time
Is the idea of sexual identity relatively new?
Why do you Tok like that?
TikTok is changing how Gen Z speaks
You look so familiar
Can there ever be another great le Carré novel?
The setting Son?
Softbank’s gambling founder, Masayoshi Son, is catnip for authors
Back Story
What the row over Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book reveals about free speech
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary


The Grand Infiltrator
Fethullah Gulen tried to transform Turkey in the subtlest ways