How Joe Biden manages the war between Israel and Hamas will define America’s global role
Sergio Massa, the economy minister, will now go head-to-head with Javier Milei
A summit in Britain will focus on “extreme” risks. But no one knows what they look like
The Globalist Podcast (October 26, 2023) – Neighbouring countries respond to the Israel-Gaza conflict and how Russia is capitalising on the situation. We also have a look through the morning’s papers and hear from president and CEO of Arctic360, Jessica Shadian.
Plus: China’s youngest-ever space crew and the latest in television news
The Guardian Weekly (October 27, 2023) – The new issue features International security corespondent Jason Burke traceing the possible route to a wider war or, in the other direction, to at least a pause in hostilities.
Elsewhere, Ruth Michaelson and Julian Borger hear from terrified Gazans who have been pushed south, while Emma Graham-Harrison, Julian and Ruth consider the likely consequences of a “victorious” Israeli ground offensive.
There’s also a report on rising antisemitism against Jewish people across Europe since the 7 October Hamas terror attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza. And in the Opinion section, Jonathan Freedland and Nesrine Malik offer powerful perspectives on the conflict.
With much attention ranged on the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has fallen a little from the spotlight. Pjotr Sauer reports from Belgrade, where some young Serbs have been signing up to fight for Russia despite the risk of prosecution at home.
Tributes were paid this week after the death of Sir Bobby Charlton, the former Manchester United and England footballing legend. The Observer’s former football correspondent Paul Wilson remembers a player who became virtually synonymous with the English game.
The Globalist Podcast (October 24, 2023) – The latest from the Middle East and why Israel is arming its civilians, the so-called ‘Venezuelan Margaret Thatcher’ Maria Corina Machado storming the opposition primaries and the fallout of Australia’s Indigenous Voice referendum.
Plus: Why a French auction of the former Senegalese president’s possessions has been suspended and an arts-news round-up.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (October 23, 2023) – A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, why only America can save Israel and Gaza from a greater catastrophe. Also, the recent election in Poland offers a lesson in how to push back on populism (10:30) and the resurgence of bedbugs, beyond the hype (16:00).
Party officials are vanishing, young workers are “lying flat,” and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country. What does China’s inner turmoil mean for the world?
By Evan Osnos
Twenty-five years ago, China’s writer of the moment was a man named Wang Xiaobo. Wang had endured the Cultural Revolution, but unlike most of his peers, who turned the experience into earnest tales of trauma, he was an ironist, in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut, with a piercing eye for the intrusion of politics into private life. In his novella “Golden Age,” two young lovers confess to the bourgeois crime of extramarital sex—“We committed epic friendship in the mountain, breathing wet steamy breath.” They are summoned to account for their failure of revolutionary propriety, but the local apparatchiks prove to be less interested in Marx than in the prurient details of their “epic friendship.”
Our accelerating rates of extraction come with immense ecological and social consequences.
The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, doesn’t have a lot to say for itself. Its Web site, which features a photo of a flowering tree next to a rusty bridge, notes that the town is “conveniently located between Asheville and Boone.” According to the latest census data, it has 2,332 residents and a population density of 498.1 per square mile. A recent story in the local newspaper concerned the closing of the Hardee’s on Highway 19E; this followed an incident, back in May, when a fourteen-year-old boy who’d eaten a biscuit at the restaurant began to hallucinate and had to be taken to the hospital. Without Spruce Pine, though, the global economy might well unravel.
October 22, 2023 – From Zürich, Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé, Fabienne Kinzelmann, Juliet Linley and Florian Egli discuss the weekend’s hottest topics. Plus: check-ins with our friends and correspondents in Palma, Helsinki and Paris.
Monocle on Saturday, October 21, 2023: Charles Hecker and Georgina Godwin discuss the Rafah border crossing opening in Egypt, turmoil in the US House of Representatives, the UK’s by-election results and hibernation season in Japan.
Plus: Monocle’s Isabella Jewell explores the Horniman Museum’s new exhibition on the history of tea, followed by a tasting of some unusual brews.
