America prepares for the midterms
The world this week
Politics
Business
The weekly cartoon

Leaders

Our cover
America is vulnerable to electoral vandalism
Too many no longer believe elections are fair
Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures during the keynote at an Apple special event on September 09, 2025 in Cupertino, California
Take the iPhone, garnish with globalisation
Tim Cook wrote a winning recipe for Apple
Will it work for his successor?
Three of Shield AI's V-Bat drones during a test drill
Move fast and militarise things
How to bolster the arsenal of democracy
America’s new defence-tech industry should be a model for Europe
People climb on old tanks at the Armored Corps memorial site during a ceremony marking Israel's annual Memorial Day for the soldiers who died in the nation's conflicts and victims of nationalistic attacks, in Latrun, Israel.
Israel
The high price of forever wars
Binyamin Netanyahu is quick to start conflicts, but shows no ability to end them
Illustration of a wheelie bin with bunting with Union Jacks and American flags on it hanging out
Couples therapy
Pomp and pageantry won’t save Britain’s alliance with America
The special relationship? It’s complicated

Letters
A selection of correspondence
Is the impending food shock caused by the Iran war preventable?
By Invitation
A portrait of Alice Evans
The route to calmer waters
Iran’s insistence on controlling Hormuz is penny smart, dollar foolish
False prophets
AI is the new Oracle of Delphi. That’s bad news
Briefing
An illustration of Donald Trump running off with a ballot box, as if stealing it.
Congressional elections
Might Donald Trump try to rig the midterms?
We assess America’s democratic defences
Asia
A girl holds photos of Pakistani Chief of the Army Staff, General Syed Asim Munir, as they protest against India after recent tensions over Pahalgam's attack in Karachi, Pakistan, 02 May 2025.
A moment in the sun
What do the geopolitical successes of Asim Munir mean for Pakistan?
Sound barrier
Honking is harming India’s health—and its economy
Tremble and obey
An anti-China protest lands Kazakhs in prison
Merchants of necessity
Why Japan is loosening restrictions on exports of lethal arms
Banyan
What have the Mughals ever done for us?
China
The Lijian-1 Y5 commercial carrier rocket carrying 15 satellites onboard blasts off from a commercial aerospace innovation pilot zone on November 11, 2024 in Alxa League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.
Views of the Middle East
How Chinese satellites have boosted Iran’s war effort
Defying expectations
Why China’s exports will keep on rising
Chaguan
The world wants Chinese tech. China is determined to keep it
United States
Illustration of the US Capitol with red and blue ballots coming out of the roof.
Department of prognostication
Virginia’s redistricting may be the nail in Republicans’ coffin
Rich and restless
Wealthy New Yorkers grumble as a new tax looms
Vote for Claude
Artificial intelligence is creeping into American lawmaking
Immigration
Donald Trump’s bold new deportation machine
Lexington
Why Congress keeps getting dumber

The Americas
A man walks past a mural featuring the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Mexico City
A cup half-empty
As the World Cup approaches, North American relations are at a nadir
Waiting for Wexit
Albertans find it harder than expected to break from Canada. Good
Peruvian polls
A botched election adds to Peru’s democratic dysfunction
Middle East & Africa
Israeli soldiers stand in a moment of silence near the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip
A new way of war
Israel’s open-ended wars have eroded its security
Tanker wars, continued
An extended ceasefire over Iran, but for how long?
A jungle of power
Which Iran is America dealing with?
RSF Inc
How a Sudanese militia built a military and economic empire
Missing Million
Abiy Ahmed is throttling free expression in Ethiopia
Europe
A soldier providing armed cover is pictured during the Bundeswehr exercise 'Operation Bollwerk Baerlin'.
The kriegstüchtig question
Can the Germans fight?
The odd throuple
Ukraine’s quest for new friends takes it to Turkey and Syria
Die another day
As Russia looks to slash budgets, a village fights to survive
Charlemagne
How Europe regulated itself into American vassalage
Britain
King Charles III And Queen Camilla Begin State Visit To The United States Of America
Special loathing
Britain rethinks its “special relationship” with America
More weaselly said than done
The international problem of weasel words
The DIY options
British nukes are utterly reliant on America
Synagogues as targets
A wave of antisemitic attacks in Britain reveals a new threat
Eggs and soldiers
Britain’s reliance on Ukrainian eggs is ruffling feathers
Sound book-keeping
Waterstones shows there is still life in the British high street
Bagehot
Sir Keir Starmer cannot govern. He has only himself to blame
International
An illustration showing a massive fighter jet being overwhelmed by a swarm of small, low-cost drones, symbolising the shift in military technology and the defence industry.
Shooting to prominence
Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are changing how America wages war
Battlefield formation
There is no better spur to military innovation than war
Slow and unsteady
Europe’s defence startups face even bigger hurdles than America’s
The Telegram
A dangerous blind spot in Donald Trump’s Iran war strategy
1843

American politics
The Republican congressman taking on Trump
Business
Image of John Ternus
Too many Cooks, not enough Jobs?
Apple’s new boss needs to restore its magic for the AI era
Star wars
Jeff Bezos is raising his game in space
The salesman in the machine
Why your AI assistant is suddenly selling to you
Mid-life crisis
From Allbirds to Glossier, millennial brands have lost their mojo
Altered state
Donald Trump is giving psychedelic medicines a welcome boost
Against the grain
The curious rise of Chinese whisky
Schumpeter
America’s descent into state capitalism is exaggerated
Finance & economics
An illustration of a poker game, the dollar v the yuan. The Yuan is winning. Their are betting for oil drums.
The comfortable yuan
Xi Jinping wants a powerful currency. America’s war has helped
Imported enthusiasm
Chinamaxxing is starting to catch on, in China
War? What war?
American corporate profits keep shrugging off global tumult
Time’s up
Global energy markets are on the verge of a disaster
Vitamin-D therapy
Renewables are shining. The Iran war amplifies their appeal
Buttonwood
The stablecoin market has got too stable
Free Exchange
Has the World Bank performed a U-turn on industrial policy?
Science & technology
A worker measuring radiation contamination levels inside the new safe confinement sarcophagus at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Nuclear disaster, 40 years on
Scientists are still learning from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Last resorts
How to stop colour-blind grouse flying into ski lifts
Cyber-security
Crypto-miners are quietly colonising computers
Well Informed
Is bone broth good for you?
Culture
A Pericles bust with Donald Trump’s mouth tied on with a string.
Uncivil war
The rhetoric of war has changed. Not for the better
Prophets of doomscrolling
In the AI propaganda war, Iran is winning
Back Story
In a new biopic, Michael Jackson is an eccentric saint. Yuck
Fiction
Judy Blume’s radical honesty changed literature for ever
In it for the long run
Runaway success: marathon organisers are seeing record demand
A black-and-white world
Ibram X. Kendi’s illiberal views on race are out of favour. Good
Economic & financial indicators
Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary
Mark Mobius
Indiana Jones on Wall Street
Mark Mobius dared to go where few others did