News

Tata Group goes into growth mode On april 1st diggers at large construction sites in two Indian states broke ground on a pair of semiconductor factories. The plant in Gujarat, which will cost $11bn, is to employ 20,000 people and...

The Magic Kingdom’s transformation is far from over When bob iger returned to the top job at Disney in November 2022, some anticipated a fairytale ending to the entertainment giant’s troubles. In February last year Nelson Peltz, a feared activist...

Xi Jinping is sending mixed messages to Western bosses and investors For years foreign companies were desperate to get into China, and faced formidable bureaucratic obstacles in their way. Now many are getting out. Over the past 12 months several...

Mass killings are at their highest level in two decades The killing started on April 7th 1994, as members of the presidential guard began assassinating opposition leaders and moderates in the government. Within hours the genocide of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis...

How not to run a city or a country For a few hours on July 21st last year, Piccadilly Circus’s advertising hoarding provided the perfect symbol of Sadiq Khan’s eight years as mayor of London. The 5,500 individual led tiles...

Not every newcomer is widely recognised When mary earps was at school there was little to suggest that celebrity and sporting greatness lay ahead. Footballing fame was then for men only. Now the Manchester United and England goalkeeper—European champion, World...

More than one route to an unfortunate destination Britons tend to believe that jobs should come to them, not the other way round. A poll in 2021 showed that a majority wanted the government to focus on ensuring that everyone...

The devolved government is secure for now, but will be tested The story has transfixed Northern Ireland. On March 28th Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was roused from his bed by police, arrested and later charged with sex offences, including rape. The...

Politicians have noticed their plight, but have largely failed to ease it Tara jones-chubb, a secretary in the National Health Service, has rented in Bounds Green, in north London, for almost 35 years. She and her two children have moved...

Its credibility is battered but intact. It can do better Seven days after Andrew Bailey became governor of the Bank of England in March 2020, Britain’s first covid-19 lockdown began. Storms have kept coming. The economy has had to endure...

They face extinction at the next election Like small nations (think of Bosnia or Kuwait), pipsqueak political parties can generate outsize effects. Consider Germany’s Free Democratic Party (fdp). The smallest of three partners in the coalition that has ruled the...

Sweating in the sauna helps For the seventh year running Finland has just been declared the world’s happiest country by the World Happiness Report, launched in 2012 to promote the sustainable development goals of the United Nations (un). Those surveyed...

They run restaurants and bars and rent out apartments these days It is cold enough for the waitress serving in the lane outside to be clad in a puffer jacket. Yet the diners, tourists hardened by northern winters, seem untroubled...

Farm exports and freight are the problems Flashing blue lights shield protesting Polish farmers from the ten km-long line of Ukrainian lorries they are holding up at the Hrebenne-Rava Ruska border crossing. The drivers say they would waste little time...

The opposition triumphs in mayoral elections in Istanbul, Ankara and across the country Turkey woke up transformed on April 1st, after the country’s main opposition party scored a spectacular upset in local elections. It won big victories in the country’s...

Reshaping the French capital and its banlieues On the site of a former piano factory in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, a 40-storey tower is being converted into a gleaming luxury hotel with a rooftop bar. A short walk...

Housing, work and health care in the continent are ill-adapted for a hotter planet South sudan’s children returned to school on April 2nd, not from a holiday but a heatwave in which thermometers reached 45°C. Teachers had been finding it...

The decision will send ripples across Africa The men came for Kwagala at the beer joint she runs in eastern Uganda, shouting that she was teaching homosexuality to their children. They kicked and punched her. “I ran as fast as...