The Economist

As covid-19 saps Vietnam’s economy, private charity is blossoming. That is unusual for a workers’ paradise. Despite the mid-morning heat, residents of the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, swarm around the dispenser filling their brown paper bags.

Trade finance, the world's most complicated paper chase, stumbles into the digital era

Is investors’ love affair with commercial property ending?

For the past 20 years investors have loaded up on property. Now they face a reckoning

You suggest that Britain may be on the brink of a constitutional crisis, and that the country’s “ramshackle, easily amended constitution is vulnerable to the radicalised politics produced by three years rowing about Brexit” (“The next to blow”, June 1st). However, the present crisis is also a consequence of that easily amended constitution. Constitutional tinkering by successive governments, particularly the transfer of powers to the European Union, brought about this situation. Both the Maastr

Covid-19 has squeezed migrants’ remittances to their families. A new report highlights the potential gains from digitisation

They were hyper-prudent in April. Now the worst-case scenario might be off the cards

It was a mortifying moment. Crouched in a bush, Katie was confronted by a dog owner whose hound had discovered her al fresco lavatory. The woman remonstrated loudly that (pooch practices notwithstanding), Katie shouldn’t relieve herself in a public place. “It was quite embarrassing and awkward as I was mid-pee, and I just tried to explain it was a desperate situation,” she recalls.

Government kitties have gained clout in the past two decades. Now they face lean years—and potential cash grabs at home

It will take hospitals months to work through the backlog

THERE IS an island 180km off the coast of China. Its democratically elected leaders say they run a country called the Republic of China. To the Communist government in Beijing the island is “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan Province, China”. International organisations, desperate not to offend either side, struggle to name it at all—many opt for the deliberately ambiguous “Chinese Taipei”, after its capital city. To most it is just “Taiwan”,

Late in 1990, when Paul Kagame was hiding on the Congolese side of the Virunga Mountains preparing to invade Rwanda, his army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, were not the only formidable inhabitants of that densely forested volcanic range.

Our weekly podcast on the markets, the economy and the world of business. This week in our global food special we trace an $8trn food chain back from fork to farm to investigate the weak links

THE last time America failed to qualify for the football World Cup, the tournament still included West Germany and the Soviet Union. But when the sport’s signature event kicks off in Russia next year, the stars and stripes will be conspicuously absent. In much of the world, there is little shame in missing the event: well-regarded teams such as the Netherlands, Ghana and Chile will also be staying home in 2018. Unlike those countries, however, the United States enjoys the great advantage of belo

ON NOVEMBER 13th the New York Cosmos won the North American Soccer League (NASL) title, beating the Indy Eleven on penalty kicks in the final. In every other football-playing country in the world, their triumph would have been cause for outright jubilation: the champions of the second division invariably rise up to the top tier the following season, where they benefit both from the challenge of facing the toughest competition and from the windfall profits associated with higher gate, broadcast a

The global food system is showing surprising resilience to the pandemic. Long may it last

More than 7,000 papers on the pandemic—covering everything from virology to epidemiology—have been published in the past three months. Much of it is being done differently. There's less peer review and more speed, which is overwhelmingly a good thing. Leaders need quick answers to direct policy and better contain the new virus. But publishers have historically done a bad job at retracting false science, which needs to be watched as it can feed misinformation. A collaboration with reporter Alok Jha, this was the lead note in the science and technology section of the May 9 2020 edition of The Economist and was featured on the cover.

Markets, ingenuity and open borders have kept the world fed. Don't take that for granted

On The Economist's 'The Intelligence' podcast, I discussed the 150th anniversary of the Met Museum

European banks are losing their influence

And it is playing a trump card in order to achieve it

And it is not America that is doing it

There are still a lot of questions that it must answer

And now the covid-19 pandemic is precipitating a split, says Matthieu Favas

Pity the pangolin. With its hard covering and ability to roll into a small ball when threatened, the scaly anteater, as it is also known, has an advantage over most predators. But it cannot repel humans. Pangolins, which are endangered, are the most trafficked wild mammals in the world. Most end up in China.

Shifts in spending are a headache for government number-crunchers

The turmoil in financial markets has demonstrated the world's greed for dollars. But it has also strengthened China's hand

Though the 150th birthday celebrations will be muted, the occasion is an opportunity to reflect on a great institution’s history

Zhang Yali remembers the pains of living in the Chinese countryside when she was growing up. On the mountainside in rural Shanxi, the northern province where her family lived, snakes and scorpions lurked. If they did not bite, the mosquitos cert

ZHANG SHIMO is popular in the afterlife. He died in mainland China in January 2012, a few months shy of his 100th birthday, but he has not been forgotten. His profile on Wa Heaven is one of the most visited on the Chinese online-memorial website. He ha