Complacent, reckless leaders have forgotten how valuable it is to restrain nuclear weapons Rarely do optimism and North Korea belong in the same breath. However, the smiles and pageantry in April's encounter between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in, leaders of the two Koreas, hinted at a deal in which the North would abandon nuclear weapons in exchange for a security guarantee from the world, and in ..
Corporate debt could be the culprit Interest rates are heading higher and that is likely to put financial markets under strain. Investors and regulators would both dearly love to know where the next crisis will come from. What is the most likely culprit? Financial crises tend to involve one or more of these three ingredients: excessive borrowing, concentrated bets, and a mismatch between assets ..
An inquiry at the old haunt of Sartre and de Beauvoir For aspiring and often penniless intellectuals, the Cafe de Flore on the left bank in Paris, with its Art Deco interior and bow-tied waiters, was once, recounts Agnes Poirier, "a university". "Conversations were not loud; the air was serious, books stood between glasses, and the lighting was decidedly dim... Men wore corduroy jackets, turtlen..
America and its allies again try to deter Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons America, Britain and France fired a barrage of missiles at targets inside Syria on April 14th. The early-morning strikes aimed to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical-weapons attack that killed dozens of people in the city of Douma a week earlier. More than 100 cruise missiles, launched..
Vladimir Putin's election victory does not mean that there is no hope Konstantin Chernenko, the general secretary of the Communist Party, died on the night of March 10th 1985 at the age of 73. As red flags trimmed with black ribbons went up in every city in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev rushed to an emergency meeting of the Politburo in the Kremlin. That meeting put Mr Gorbachev in charge ..
A rally in Washington, DC organized by the student-survivors of a shooting in Florida, was one of several hundred around the world On March 24th, less than 40 days after a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, hundreds of thousands gathered near Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to protest against America's lax gun laws and implore Congress and President Donald..
After Brexit, it will be a lot harder One question confronting Britain and the European Union is how to maintain foreign-policy and security co-operation after Brexit. Theresa May, Britain's prime minister, often notes that failure to find agreement would harm the security interests of both sides. On March 22nd that observation found a pointed form of expression at an EU summit in Brussels, foll..
China's size and behavior are prompting a rethink on trade The post-war system of global trade has been close to expiring, seemingly, for most of the post-war period. It tottered in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan muscled trading partners into curbing their exports to America. It wobbled with the end of the fruitless Doha round of trade talks. The system now faces the antediluvian economics of Pre..
A BIS report advises: proceed with caution Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Stellar, Cardano: the infant world of cryptocurrencies is already mind-bogglingly crowded. Amid the cacophony of blackchain-based would-be substitutes for official currencies, central banks from Singapore to Sweden have been pondering whether they should issue digital versions of their own money, too. None is about to do so, but ..
Humans are starting to use the sea more as farmers than as hunters, says Hal Hodson In the summer of 1942, as America's Pacific fleet was slugging it out at the battle of Midway, the USS Jasper, a coastal patrol boat, was floating 130 nautical miles (24km) off the west coast of Mexico, listening to the sea below. It was alive with sound: "Some fish grunt, others whistle or sing, and some just gr..
Do not expect much good to come of Donald Trump's impulsive, off-the-cuff decision to accept an invitation to meet North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Un, "by May". For such a summit to maximize its chances of success would have required careful and painstaking back-channel diplomacy of the kind exemplified by Henry Kissinger before Nixon made his historic visit to China in 1972. Mr Trump should ha..
Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium would be just the start Donald Trump is hardly the first American president to slap unilateral tariffs on imports. Every inhabitant of the Oval Office since Jimmy Carter has imposed some kind of protectionist curbs on trade, often on steel. Nor will Mr Trump's vow to put 25% tariffs on steel and 10% on aluminium by themselves wreck the economy: they ..
And another headache for SpaceX's competitors It was not the most powerful launch ever seen at the Kennedy Space Centre's Pad 39A; almost half a century ago the Apollo programme's mighty Saturn V's made use of it. But if the Falcon Heavy that took off from 39A on February 6th could boast only half the thrust of those bygone giants, its successful maiden voyage still proved it the most powerful r..
There is lots to dislike in Europe's populists, but also something to study The European Union must feel as if it has seen off the populist horde. Economic growth is at its strongest in a decade. Emmanuel Macron has defeated the National Front and is transforming France. Although just 41% of citizens trust the EU, that is more than trust their national governments - and is fully ten points up on..
Welcome to Doctor You No wonder they are called "patients". When people enter the health-care systems of rich countries today, they know what they will get: prodding doctors, endless tests, baffling jargon, rising costs and, above all, long waits. Some stoicism will always be needed, because health care is complex and diligence matters. But frustration is boiling over. This week three of the big..