Economics
Kazakhstan Looked Stable Until Last Week. Perhaps That Was the Problem.
Last Sunday, I wrote about a small protest in western Kazakhstan over the price of liquefied petroleum gas and argued that, if the demonstrations spread, the fuel price would probably turn out to be the…
A Fuel Price Has Brought Kazakhs Into the Streets. It Probably Isn’t Only About Fuel.
Residents of Zhanaozen, a city in western Kazakhstan’s oil-producing region, have begun demonstrating after the price of liquefied petroleum gas rose sharply at the beginning of the year. LPG is widely used to fuel cars…
Libya Was Supposed to Elect a President This Week. It Couldn’t Agree on the Rules.
The date itself was symbolic. 24 December marked seventy years since Libya declared independence in 1951. After Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship, the uprising that overthrew him in 2011, a decade of political division and years of…
Chile Got Richer. Its Voters Still Want to Change the System.
Gabriel Boric is 35 years old, a former student protest leader and left-wing congressman who was not even born when Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973. He defeated José Antonio Kast, a conservative candidate whose…
Russia Is Building Up Forces Near Ukraine. The Hardest Question Is Whether It Actually Intends to Use Them.
Ukraine says Russia may be preparing for an attack. American officials have increasingly expressed concern about the scale and nature of Russia’s military activity. Moscow denies that it is planning an invasion and argues that…
South Africa Warned the World About Omicron. The World Responded by Closing Its Borders.
By Friday, governments around the world were restricting travel from southern Africa, stock markets were falling, scientists were racing to understand a heavily mutated coronavirus variant and the World Health Organization had classified it as…
Austria Is Planning to Make COVID Vaccination Compulsory. How Much Choice Do We Give Up to Protect Everyone Else?
That is an extraordinary escalation in government power over an individual’s medical decision, and it deserves a more serious argument than either “vaccines work, so obviously everyone should be forced to take them” or “my…
One Word Nearly Broke COP26. That Word Explains the Entire Problem.
Almost 200 countries adopted the Glasgow Climate Pact, an agreement intended to accelerate climate action during this decade and keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Governments agreed to…
Everyone Agrees Climate Change Is a Problem. That Is the Easy Part.
COP26 has produced an extraordinary collection of promises already. More than 100 countries have backed a pledge to reduce global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of this decade. More than…
More Than 200 People Died in Beirut. A Year Later, Lebanon Is Fighting Over Whether Anyone Can Be Held Responsible.
Approximately 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate had been stored for years at the city’s port. When it exploded, more than 200 people were killed, thousands were injured and entire neighbourhoods were devastated. The images were…
Poland Doesn’t Want to Leave the EU. It Wants to Decide Which EU Rules Apply.
Britain spent years arguing about whether membership of the European Union had taken too much sovereignty away from Parliament. Eventually, British voters chose to leave. Poland is now creating a different and potentially more difficult…
The Pandora Papers Reveal Something Bigger Than Tax Avoidance
More than 11.9 million confidential records from 14 companies providing offshore financial services have been examined by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and hundreds of journalists around the world. The investigation involves financial structures…
