News

A new history argues the Eastern Front gets less attention but was hugely consequential Just 29 years old, Karl I was desperate to lead Austria-Hungary out of the first world war. He was crowned as Habsburg emperor in November 1916...

More people are reaching the summit, but more people are dying on the way, too Climbing mount everest used to be a feat of staggering bravery, endurance and skill. In the 40 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay...

A new book looks at the history of the crossword through the women who designed it What is a three-letter word for “preppy, party-loving, egotistical male, in modern lingo”? Answer: “Bro”. When Anna Shechtman, a cruciverbalist (crossword constructor), introduced this...

“Fallout” is the latest in a successful run of adaptations Anew instalment of “Fallout”, a long-running series of video games, was released recently to rave reviews. Critics called the post-apocalyptic adventure a “rare gem” and an “absolute blast”. In its...

What the once-derided movement reveals about art today The world was not always an arena of Claude Monet superfans. “Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape,” sneered Louis Leroy, an art critic, when describing Monet’s “Impression,...

Demands grow to restrict young people’s access to phones and social media Two months ago Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough set up a WhatsApp group to discuss how to stave off their young children’s demands for smartphones. After they posted...

From pesticides to drones, new technologies are helping win an age-old battle In the list of plagues inflicted upon the people of Egypt in the Book of Exodus, only darkness and death get higher billing than locusts. That ranking is...

Can they keep improving forever? In ai-land, technologies move from remarkable to old hat at the speed of light. Only 18 months ago the release of Chatgpt, Openai’s chatbot, launched an ai frenzy. Today its powers have become commonplace. Several...

The fund will freeze out China if that is what it takes to offer relief It is now four years since the first poor countries were plunged into default because of spiralling costs from covid-19 spending and investors pulling capital...

Jane Fraser’s unexpected success Unmanageable and uninvestible. That is how investors have long considered Citigroup. For over a decade the bank, which was once the largest and most valuable in America, has been a basket case. It trades at half...

Expensive oil could put Donald Trump in the White House When iran’s missiles whizzed towards Israel on Saturday April 13th, oil markets were closed. When they opened on Monday, their reaction was a loud “meh”. Brent crude, the global benchmark,...

And America now hopes to convince others to make better use of the stash After russia destroyed the Trypilska power plant on April 11th, Ukraine blamed a lack of anti-missile ammunition. The country’s leaders are also desperate for more financial...

The country’s leaders are too complacent about deflation When china’s leaders set an economic-growth target of “around” 5% for this year, the goal was widely agreed to be ambitious. Now the country looks increasingly likely to meet it. Several foreign...

Large companies such as ByteDance, OpenAI and Stripe are staying private The law of supply and demand is one of the first things that students of economics learn. When the price of something goes up, producers bring more to market....

Millennials were poorer at this stage in their lives. So were baby-boomers Generation z is taking over. In the rich world there are at least 250m people born between 1997 and 2012. About half are now in a job. In...

Shareholder letters are proving to be bleakly prophetic Schumpeter likes to write—and receive—handwritten letters. When he got out his pen last year and wrote to Larry Fink, boss of BlackRock, he explained to the passive-investing billionaire that he was doing...

A sweeping bill in Congress could cost patients at home American health-care costs are sky-high; as treatments get pricier and the number of patients swells owing to an ageing population, they are getting higher. Chinese biotechnology is increasingly sophisticated and,...

When heritage meets innovation “Thick”, scoffed the headline on the Daily Mail website on April 9th, in response to the news that Scrabble has had an overhaul. In some parts of the world the word-play game has been relaunched with...