The world this week

Politics
Business
The weekly cartoon
This week’s cover
Leaders


The presidential election
Welcome to Trump’s world
His sweeping victory will shake up everything

Adapting to Trump’s world
Europe needs to wake up and look after itself
The biggest obstacle is Germany, which now urgently needs elections

Bombay bulls
How to protect India’s shareholder capitalism from itself
A surge in equity investment is threatened by risky derivatives trading

Out in the open
Why open-source AI models are good for the world
Their critics dwell on the dangers and underestimate the benefits

New diets, old problems
A scourge that damages babies’ brains is coming back
Yet iodine deficiency is startlingly easy to prevent

Letters

On compulsory voting, Angela Merkel, terrorism, maths, British citizenship, S&M
Letters to the editor
Briefing


Comeback king
Donald Trump’s victory was resounding. His second term will be, too
Congress is not likely to be much of a constraint on him
Asia


Indonesia’s foreign policy
Will Prabowo Subianto cosy up to Donald Trump or to China?
Pariah politics
Myanmar’s junta chief finally goes to China
A burning issue
South-East Asian Muslims are incensed by the war in Gaza
Crime and punishment
Why suspects in Japan are almost never acquitted
Banyan
What Narendra Modi’s third term may look like
China


Challenges and opportunities
Is the return of Donald Trump China’s dream or nightmare?
Eagle v Dragon
In some areas of military strength, China has surpassed America
China’s economy
Chinese netizens wonder if their economy is in “garbage time”
United States


Law and peace
What a Republican trifecta will mean for governing
MAHA man
What role might Trump give Robert F. Kennedy junior?
State of the states
Ballot-measure results reveal the power of state policy
Governors and state legislatures
Democrats suffer in statehouse races, too
Campaign calculus: fool me thrice
Opinion polls underestimated Donald Trump again
Presidential immunity
Donald Trump also won a reprieve from justice
MAGA justice
Donald Trump’s potential SCOTUS picks
Lexington
Democrats need to understand: Americans think they’re worse
Middle East & Africa


Direction unknown
Will Donald Trump “stop the wars” in the Middle East?
Israeli politics
Binyamin Netanyahu fires his defence minister
The war in Lebanon
Israel’s war aims in Lebanon are expanding
Democratic norms
What the world can learn from Botswana
One country, two kinds of family
Why the fertility gap between north and south Nigeria matters
Missing millions
Congo-Brazzaville has lost a big chunk of its oil revenue

The Americas


The first call
Donald Trump is poised to smash Mexico with tariffs
Mexican politics
Mexico is edging closer and closer to one-party rule
Losing friends and alienating people
BRICS isn’t exactly picky, but has just rejected Venezuela
Europe


Betrayal or bargain?
Why Volodymyr Zelensky may welcome Donald Trump’s victory
Combat and casualties
Hell, horror and heroism in Ukraine’s battlefield hospitals
The exploding traffic light
Germany’s fractious coalition falls apart—and how!
After the waters fell
Spain’s flood poses far-reaching political questions
Charlemagne
A flailing economy has left the EU exposed to Trumpian outbursts
Britain


Becoming more European
Two groups are least happy about Labour’s budget
Gilt vigilantes
Labour’s budget has given the bond market indigestion
The Conservatives
Kemi Badenoch, the Tories’ new leader, plans war on the “blob”
Valuable lessons
Higher fees won’t help Britain’s beleaguered universities much
Poor law
The Labour government picks up a bad Tory habit
Past tense
What does it mean to wear a poppy today?
Bagehot
Farmer fight: Jeremy Clarkson versus Roald Dahl
International


Global disorder
America’s allies brace for brinkmanship, deals—and betrayal
The Telegram
The world faces its worst trade wars since 1930s
Business


CEOs in Trumpland (the sequel)
How will business deal with Donald Trump this time?
A nasty case of pilotitis
Why your company is struggling to scale up generative AI
Pipe dreams
Oil bosses have big hopes for the AI boom
Harmony and enmity
Huawei’s new made-in-China software takes on Apple and Android
Back on the bike
India’s startup scene is picking up speed again
Bartleby
Why being wrong is good for you
Schumpeter
What would Elon Musk do in government?
Finance & economics


Taxes down, walls up
The return of Trumponomics excites markets but frightens the world
The wisdom of the crowd
What betting markets got right and wrong about Trump’s victory
Mutual benefit
India is undergoing an astonishing stockmarket revolution
The ships are down
Sanctions are sinking Russia’s flagship gas project
Buttonwood
Barbarians on the porch
Free exchange
Big Macs, strawberry jam and the wealth of nations
Science & technology


Open-minded
A battle is raging over the definition of open-source AI
Crash course
China plans to crash a spacecraft into a distant asteroid
Out for blood
How blood-sucking vampire bats get their energy
Worth its salt
As wellness trends take off, iodine deficiency makes a quiet comeback
Culture


Crowning achievements
The Economist’s selection of the best TV of 2024
The riled west
Montanans are ready for “Yellowstone” to end
The other Iran hostage crisis
The six-day siege that put terror on television
Earth father
Can a biography capture the complexity of a long life?
Sisterly abuse
Exposing the horrors of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries
Nation chief
Fiction captures the forces that led to Brexit
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary


The Prince of Bel-Air
Quincy Jones ruled popular music for half a century