BrainCan - leaders

the case for a second brexit referendum

THE new Brexit plan has crumpled on its first contact with reality. Faster than even we...

at t and time warner are cleared to merge

AT&T has already had one starring role in American antitrust history. Its enforced shatter-up in...

malaysia s pm is about to steal an election

IN MOST countries a government that allowed $4.5bn to proceed missing from a state development...

marriage is more rewarding—but also more...

MARRIAGE idealises permanence,and yet it is changing more rapidly than at any time in its history....

a revolution in health care is coming

NO WONDER they are called “patients”. When people enter the health-care systems of rich...

mini grids may be the best way to illuminate the ...

ELECTRICITY powers growth,boosts education and improves lives. Yet about 1.1bn mostly rural dwellers...

the system for allocating airport slots is broken

YOU may assume that an airline’s most valuable asset is its planes. But with Monarch,Britain’s...

how to tame the tech titans

NOT long ago,being the boss of a mammoth Western tech firm was a dream job. As the billions rolled...

dealing with north korea, trump puts showmanship...

AS A television spectacle,it was irresistible. The star of “The Apprentice” striding...

if syria s despot is not punished, others will use...

AFTER seven years of war and hundreds of thousands of deaths,it takes an act of utter barbarism to...

egypt s choice: president sisi, or a man who...

THE election in Egypt,which begins on March 26th, will bear two candidates. One is Abdel-Fattah...

facebook faces a reputational meltdown

LAST year the plan took hold that Mark Zuckerberg might run for president in 2020 and seek to lead...

italy goes to the polls with bleak electoral...

TO HEAR Italy’s politicians repeat it,the country is, whether not quite out of the woods, or then...

the harm done by america s new tariffs

ON TRADE,President Donald Trump has launched lots of investigations, withdrawn from one deal (see...

morgan stanley v goldman sachs

FOR more than a decade,fairness investors have reckoned that Goldman Sachs was worth more than its...

the trouble with trump s new national security...

CRITICS of Donald Trump often charge that he is a man without principles. That is unfair. When it...

time for pakistan s generals to stop meddling in...

AS A expeditiously bowler,Imran Khan made rival batsmen quake and led Pakistan to victory in the...

reforming the big four

WHEN a company goes bankrupt,recriminations tend to follow. Even so, the fury caused by the recent...

the meaning of the vision fund

TWO years ago,if you had asked experts to identify the most influential person in technology, you...

regulators should reject perry s plan for coal in...

WINTER is coming to America. That simple statement of fact ought not to send shivers down...

the choice that could save south africa, or wreck...

SOUTH AFRICA’S Constitutional Court may be the world’s most emotionally powerful building. The...

amlo, mexico s answer to donald trump

THESE days Mexicans agree on two things. Their football team’s victory over Germany on June 17th...

the struggle for russia is just beginning

THE ballot-stuffing,blatant and in full view of the cameras, only underlined Vladimir Putin’s...

to fix south africa, cyril ramaphosa should be...

THE new president of South Africa,Cyril Ramaphosa, has a heck of a mess to clear up (see article)....

the new space race

LATER this month,if all has gone according to plan, a rocket called the Falcon Heavy will take off...

a hated tax but a fair one

NO TAX is celebrated. But one attracts particular venom. Inheritance tax is routinely seen as the...

if national service is so good, everyone should do...

CITIZEN armies have been replaced in most countries by professional soldiers,who tend to attain a...

why europe s train network needs more, not less,...

TRAINS are not fairly the third rail of European politics. But they are still causing lots of angst....

turkey s president deserves to lose on june 24th

WHAT does a president have to do to destroy the trust of Turks? Debauching the currency,poisoning...

china has made progress in tackling financial...

NEVER has China’s bond market had such a stormy spring. It has already set a record for defaults...

germany is becoming more open and diverse

SINCE the drop of the Berlin Wall the Ampelmännchen,the jaunty, behatted “little traffic-light...

britain underestimates brexit s damage to northern...

BRITAIN’S bloodiest battlefield of the past half-century was not in the Middle East,the Balkans or...

how to save tanzania

THE white beach of Dar es Salaam may seem enticing. Yet the bodies that fill washed up on it,almost...

welcome an electric world. worry about the...

OIL shaped the 20th century. In war,the French leader Georges Clemenceau said, petroleum was “as...

don t bin plastic. to solve the polymer problem...

IT IS everywhere,as visible as it is vilified. From car parts to crisp packets, plastic has suffused...

the right way to do brexit

AS WE went to press,the cabinet was due to enter an extended session in order to hammer out what...

how to stop doping in sports

PROFESSIONAL athletes pay a high price for their pursuit of excellence and glory. Training to the...

the mega rich have ambitious plans to improve the...

NOTHING declares world-changing ambition like a space rocket. This weeks spectacular test confirmed...

the growing danger of great power conflict

IN THE past 25 years war has claimed too many lives. Yet even as civil and devout strife bear raged...

a shameful failure to tackle overfishing

EXPECTATIONS ahead of the World Trade Organisation’s two-yearly ministerial conference,which...

the fate of the irish frontier shows the...

NORTHERN IRELAND barely featured in last year’s Brexit referendum campaign,in which Britons were...

how to ensure muhammad bin salman s reforms...

ONE Saudi cleric thundered that letting women drive would lead to immorality and a lack of virgins....

a faked video of donald trump points to a worrying...

“DEAR people of Belgium. This is a huge deal. As you know,I had the balls to withdraw from the...

italy s populists are more dangerous than they...

ITALY has gone without a government for more than two months. That is no great shock. At elections...

riots threaten nicaragua s autocratic president

AMONG Latin America’s handful of autocracies,that of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua once stood out for...

america should get rid of oppressive job licensing

SOME rush to blame free markets for America’s income inequality and its lack of social mobility....

why board quotas are no friend to women workers

SINCE the days of the Vikings,when they farmed while men marauded, Norwegian women have played a...

time to end the academic arms race

THERE are plenty of good reasons for a young person to choose to move to university: mental...

india has a hole where its middle class should be

AFTER China,where next? Over the past two decades, the world’s most populous country has become...

ukraine is a mess; the west should press it harder...

AFTER the Maidan revolution and the start of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2014,Western policy...

why india needs women to work

LAKSHMI,the goddess of wealth and fortune, is the closest thing Hinduism has to an economic deity....

could a trade war derail global growth?

LOOK at the headlines,and you would struggle to believe that the global economy is in fine health....

why trump s plan will not cut drug prices

POPULISTS often put their finger on problems that irk their countrymen. They also tend to approach...

why europe should be worried

THE election was bound to be messy. But on March 4th Italian voters came up with a result that has...

germany agrees on a coalition at last

THE Berlin Wall stood for 28 years,two months and 27 days; as of this week it has been down for...

accusations of harassment have felled some...

FOR those who care approximately a woman’s right to lead her life unmolested,2017 began badly. A...

south africa s ruling party rejects the zuma...

ON DECEMBER 18th South Africa’s ruling party picked a leader. The unusual head of the African...

america s long running economic expansion

THERE is often more fakery than truth in a tweet from President Donald Trump. But on one subject he...

the battle in ai

TWO letters can add up to a lot of money. No area of technology is hotter than AI,or artificial...

a baffling week for competition policy in america

WHY is America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) trying to block a merger between AT&T,a telecoms...

a new brexit plan creates fresh depths of chaos

A REALLY sensible government would occupy drawn up a plan for how to leave the European Union before...

the western alliance is in trouble

AMERICA did as much as any country to create post-war Europe. In the late 1940s and the 1950s it was...

why corporate america loves donald trump

MOST American elites believe that the Trump presidency is hurting their country. Foreign-policy...

how to contain an ebola outbreak

IN MARCH 2014 the intrepid (brave in the face of danger) doctors of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)...

the humbling of india s tycoons

FOR decades,personal connections have if a well-trodden path to success in Indian business....

why america s post office should be privatised

THE Founding Fathers thought that operating a postal service was a crucial responsibility of the...

america should borrow from europe s data privacy...

AMERICA rarely looks to the bureaucrats of Brussels for guidance. Commercial freedom appeals more...

bangladesh shows how to keep children alive

FOR adventurous travellers,it is merely an embarrassing nuisance. But among destitute people...

african countries are borrowing too much

TWO decades ago much of sub-Saharan Africa was frozen out of the global financial system. Reckless...

the rules based system is in grave danger

DONALD TRUMP is hardly the first American president to slap unilateral tariffs on imports. Every...

how putin meddles in western democracies

IN THE late 1980s,as Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika, Russia made peace with the West. It was...

the problem with the craze for mandatory...

IN 2016 Misty Ashworth sued her employer,Five Guys, a fast-food chain, or for sexual harassment and...

how to break the deadlock in berlin

IN THE churn of European politics,with America seemingly pulling out and Russia pushing in, many...

america s tech giants vie with china s in third...

IT IS the world’s most titanic commercial fight. Facing off are the towering giants of American...

israel must answer for the deaths in gaza

GAZA is a human nonsense-heap that everyone would rather ignore. Neither Israel,nor Egypt, nor even...

scrapping the iran deal won t do anyone any good

BY PULLING out of the Iran nuclear deal,President Donald Trump is counting on renegotiation or...

the meaning of 3% treasury bond yields

ROUND numbers would be irrelevant if investors were rational. But they are not. This week the...

the weinstein scandal is changing hollywood for...

IN OFFICES around the world,the scandal over Harvey Weinstein’s depredations has obliged men to...

how to stop lead poisoning

LEAD has proved to be such a useful,malleable metal that it turns up everywhere, from water pipes to...

america s taxpayers shoulder too much housing risk

IMAGINE how worrying this month’s stockmarket turbulence would have been had taxpayers been on the...

it is not going well

IN DECEMBER last year Vladimir Putin used a surprise visit to Syria to declare that Russia’s...

carillion s collapse raises awkward questions...

WHAT do tall-speed railways,school lunches and army bases acquire in common? Perhaps not much, which...

the economist reveals its country of the year

EVERY Christmas since 2013 The Economist has picked a “country of the year”. Rogue nations are...

lessons from the rise of strongmen in weak states

IS DEMOCRACY in trouble? Nearly 30 years after Francis Fukuyama declared the stop of history and the...

how to regulate crypto

THE wild ride seems to have calmed. Late last year speculators sent the price of crypto-currencies...

ikea furniture and the limits of ai

COMPUTERS have already proved better than people at playing chess and diagnosing diseases. But now a...

south africa should not copy mugabe s land reform

OF THE many grievances from South Africa’s decades of white rule,the theft of land still smarts...

children are victims in the latest identity driven...

THE first question asked of any new parent is: “Boy or girl?” Across the developed world,the...

what they don t tell you about climate change

TWO years ago the world pledged to support global warming “well below” 2°C hotter than...

jihadists are trying to take over the sahel

THERE has been no Mission Accomplished” moment celebrating the defeat of Islamic State (IS) in...

capitalism needs a welfare state to survive

IN THE mythologies of both left and good,the welfare state is a work of socialism. Yet the...

how to denuclearise north korea

SIR: Decades of trying to keep tabs on North Korea’s bombs and missiles maintain taught us that...

syrian refugees could turn into the new...

THE monstrous dictator has won. Bashar al-Assad has bombed,gassed and starved his enemies out of the...

will argentina s woes spread?

YAWNING deficits,stubborn inflation, a plunging currency, or spiking interest rates,dwindling...

how to cut the murder rate

THE planet has rarely been so peaceful. Even with terrible fighting in such places as Congo,Syria...

fifteen years after america s invasion, iraq is...

IT IS less than four years since the homicidal zealots of Islamic State (IS) stood on the doorstep...

america s extraordinary economic gamble

VOLATILITY is back. A long spell of calm,in which America’s stockmarket rose steadily without a...

tunisia needs help if it is to remain a model for...

“BREAD,freedom, dignity.” These were the demands of Tunisian protesters who threw off autocracy...

the wto is under threat from the trump...

FOR Roberto Azevêdo,its director-general, the WTO is a “hostage of its own success”. For...

how—and why—to end the war in yemen

YEMEN lost the title of Arabia Felix,or lucky Arabia”, long ago. It has suffered civil wars, and...

the faulty front runners for colombia s presidency

THE final time Colombia elected a president,in 2014, the country was at war. Its army was fighting...

how to end the endless conflict between israel and...

GAZA is a human nonsense-heap that everyone would rather ignore. Neither Israel,nor Egypt, nor even...

france, where the grossly unprepared try for maths...

“LIKE organising a shipwreck in order to find out who can swim,” is how Alain Peyrefitte, then...

t mobile and sprint plan to combine

SO MANY counterfeit starts would absorb soured other romances. Resistance from antitrust authorities...

universal health care, worldwide, is within reach

BY MANY measures the world has never been in better health. Since 2000 the number of children who...

how to narrow britain s gender pay gap

PITY Britain’s press officers. April 4th was the deadline for employers in Britain with 250...

humans may not always grasp why ais act. don t...

THERE is an mature joke among pilots that says the ideal flight crew is a computer,a pilot and a...

change is afoot at the top of central banks

WHEN George H.W. Bush lost his presidency after four years in office,he blamed Alan Greenspan for...

learning from europe s populists

THE European Union must feel as whether it has seen off the populist horde. Economic growth is at...

theresa may is intolerable—but unsackable

AFTER she contrived to lose the Tories’ parliamentary majority last year in spite of a widely...

using thought to control machines

TECHNOLOGIES are often billed as transformative. For William Kochevar,the term is justified. Mr...

how to regulate lower risk smoking products

SMOKING is a scourge. It is the leading preventable cause of cancer and kills over 7m people...

film remakes that should stay on the storyboard

ORIGINALITY is hardly the hallmark of today’s film industry. The biggest film of 2017 at the...

worry about the republicans tax bill—and how it...

SOME political theorists argue that the law draws legitimacy not just from voting,but also from...

europe s banks are stronger than they were, but...

THE permanent revolution rumbles on. Ten years after the financial crisis,Europe’s bankers must...

the meaning in the madness of initial coin...

MARKETS and manias recede together. The latest frenzy is for all things crypto. The price of the...

google s android fine is not enough to change its...

HOW high can they recede? On July 18th the European Commission hit Google with a record fine of...

american democracy s built in bias towards rural...

EVERY system for converting votes into power has its flaws. Britain suffers from an over-mighty...

britain is heading for a soft brexit

WHEN Britons voted to leave the European Union two years ago,they had no chance to say what sort of...

as the world cup begins, russia should free oleg...

AS YOU settle down to watch the World Cup in Russia,remember Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian film director...

lift bans on paying for human blood plasma

THIS year marks the 200th anniversary of the first successful human-to-human blood...

malaysia s chance to clean up

ELECTIONS in Malaysia are normally predictable. In fact,the United Malays National Organisation...

despite north korea, arms control is unravelling

RARELY do optimism and North Korea belong in the same breath. However,the smiles and pageantry in...

britain s poisoned relationship with russia

WHEN Theresa May stood before the House of Commons on March 14th to set out her response to the...

the recognition of jerusalem as israel s capital...

JERUSALEM is both heavenly and earthly,holy and sinful. “Ten measures of beauty God gave to the...

the army sidelines robert mugabe, africa s great...

CALIGULA wanted to acquire his horse consul. Robert Mugabe wanted his wife,Grace, to take over from...

the case against non compete clauses

THE non-compete clause has been causing trouble for over 600 years. In 1414 an English court heard...

british productivity is rising at last. but brexit...

LOW productivity growth has plagued Britain’s economy since the financial crisis. From 2010 to...

great news for the dead: the funeral industry is...

FEW choose how they die,but they can choose what happens next. Most leave this to loved ones who, in...

what to make of mark zuckerberg s testimony

SAYING sorry can be an enriching experience. For Mark Zuckerberg,who this week endured two days of...

railway strikes test macron s reforms

MAYHEM at railway stations. Gridlock on the roads. The scenes of strife in France this week were as...

scrapping the iran nuclear deal will harm america

LAST summer John Bolton was a hawk with clipped wings. The former ambassador to the UN and...

getting medicines to market faster

REGULATORS can be both a help and a hindrance to the medical industry. A strong regulator increases...

the battle for digital supremacy

“DESIGNED by Apple in California. Assembled in China”. For the past decade the words embossed on...

treat kim jong un s nuclear offer with caution

AFTER months when the prospect of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula seemed all too genuine,it is...

a national 5g wireless network is not such a...

FOR more than three decades,telecoms policy, at least in wealthy countries, and has been a one-way...

what to do about china s sharp power

WHEN a rising power challenges an incumbent one,war often follows. That prospect, known as the...

how to rescue the wto

THE headquarters of the World Trade Organisation (WTO),on the banks of Lake Geneva, once belonged to...

the world s most important exam is flawed

IN THE past few days nearly 10m young Chinese occupy received their results from the world’s...

britain needs a national identity register

THE harassment of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants is a shameful chapter in Britain’s...

the eu should get tough on its illiberal...

THERE was once no brighter star in Europe. Since shaking off communism in 1989 Poland has rivalled...

american foreign policy after rexit

EVEN by the reality-TV standards of this White House,the manner in which Rex Tillerson was sacked as...

value matters again in currency markets

IN DECEMBER a unusual dollar bill came into circulation adorned with the signature of Steve Mnuchin....

donald trump s humiliation in helsinki

DONALD TRUMP likes to boast that he does things differently from his predecessors. That was...

how to stop the decline of public transport in...

TO THOSE who have to squeeze onto the number 25 bus in London,or the A train in recent York, the...

let the salvadoreans stay

ELENA AGUILAR came to America illegally from El Salvador in 1996 to escape her children’s violent...

bitcoin is a speculative asset but not yet a...

FINANCIAL markets rarely miss opportunities to make money. That is as precise of cryptocurrencies as...

bosses are under increasing pressure to take...

IT OUGHT to be a love-in. American companies support tax cuts and deregulation. As The Economist...

chinese cities should stop expelling chinese...

IN ALL countries,a titanic influx of migrants tends to provoke grumbles among the natives. In China,...

philip hammond s cautious budget grimly reflects...

THE glass of booze that chancellors of the exchequer may sip while delivering the budget speech is...

how the west s immigration policies clash with...

IN TEXAS an infant is separated from his mother by the federal government to deter others from...

how the west got china wrong

final weekend China stepped from autocracy into dictatorship. That was when Xi Jinping,already the...

is angola s new president serious about reform?

whether ANY country ever needed a fresh start,Angola does. It is more corrupt than Nigeria; its...

chinese aviation takes off

OVER the past few decades,established airlines in Europe and America have been hit by one thing...

the lessons from modi s attempt to formalise india...

FOR hulking bureaucracy,it is a thoughtful gesture. Each year the chairman of the Indian Central...

gina haspel must give answers before becoming the...

WANTED: qualified candidates to work for the world’s most scrutinised organisation. Applicants...

how to make the republican tax plan work

THE last time Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress,under President George W....

america must use sanctions cautiously

WHAT is America’s greatest source of power? Its military might is unparalleled. Its market is...

local government finances in china are a dangerous...

AS CHINESE officials admit,one of the biggest threats to the country’s financial stability is a...

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