World

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

After the Olympics, France has to face its grim reality

The French television personality Laurent Baffie, interviewed by Le Figaro, came up with a nice phrase for the success beyond most expectations of the Paris Olympics: it had been ‘une parenthèse enchantée’, he said, but parentheses always have to close and ‘la merde va revenir’. I’m guessing he meant France’s brief political truce will end and attention will refocus on economic woes, even after a slight fall in unemployment – to 7.3 per cent, compared with the UK rate of 4.4 per cent – that was announced as another ‘bonne surprise’. Writing from the Dordogne, where lunch is long and markets that matter are not global and financial but local

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Why China’s nostalgia industry is booming

Nostalgia is a thriving industry in China. I first noticed this while walking around Nanjing last summer. There were shops with names like ‘Finding Childhood’ or ‘Childhood Memories’, selling sweets and toys that had long been discontinued. There were posters of TV shows and celebrities from the 1980s and 1990s. The customers were like me – misty-eyed millennials, often women, looking for their lost childhoods. ‘Oh my god, remember that!’ We relished every moment. The shops have sprung up suddenly in the past two years, mostly catering to my generation, who spend more on high-street tat than our elders. But older Chinese have been seeking nostalgia too. They get their

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde

The global fertility crisis is worse than you think

For anyone tempted to try to predict humanity’s future, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb is a cautionary tale. Feeding on the then popular Malthusian belief that the world was doomed by high birth rates, Ehrlich predicted: ‘In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.’ He came up with drastic solutions, including adding chemicals to drinking water to sterilise the population. Ehrlich, like many others, got it wrong. What he needed to worry about was declining birth rates and population collapse. Nearly 60 years on, many predict the world will soon reproduce at less than the replacement rate. But by my calculations, we’re already there.

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

What’s the real aim of Ukraine’s Russian offensive?

On Monday morning, Vladimir Putin was briefed about Ukraine’s audacious invasion of Russian territory. With his military chiefs in front of him, he announced that Kyiv had been doing the bidding of its western masters but would succeed only in the ‘annihilation’ of the troops it had sent to Kursk. All this was, as usual, broadcast live by the Kremlin to reassure Russians that the President was in control of the situation – then everything started to go wrong. Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of the invaded Kursk region, had been expected to give details of the successful evacuation of citizens. Instead, he began to reel off the extent of

Owen Matthews

Zelensky’s new offensive could push Putin to the brink

A Russian friend speaking from Kursk tells me the latest war joke. Vladimir Putin summons Stalin’s ghost. ‘Comrade Stalin!’ asks Putin. ‘German tanks are in Kursk again. I need your advice.’ Stalin’s ghost ponders before answering. ‘Do what I did. Get hold of as much American military aid as you can, and make sure to send in the Ukrainians at the vanguard of your army.’ In 1943, the battle-scarred fields of Kursk were filled with troops of the Red Army’s First Ukrainian Front, riding American-supplied aircraft and tanks as they advanced westwards towards Berlin. Today, Ukrainian troops – some in German-supplied vehicles – are fighting Russians less than 50 miles

Wednesday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Adam Higginbotham: Challenger

50 min listen

Sam’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Adam Higginbotham, whose new book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space describes the 1986 space shuttle disaster that took the lives of seven astronauts and, arguably, inflicted America’s greatest psychic scar since the assassination of JFK. He tells Sam about the extraordinary men and women who lost their lives that day, the astounding engineering involved in the spacecraft that America had started to take for granted, and the deep roots and long aftermath of the accident.   

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Imane Khelif’s laughable lawsuit against J.K. Rowling

Popcorn not being the traditional French treat to celebrate an entertaining spectacle, break out the caramel au beurre salé.   J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have been accused in a complaint to French prosecutors of misgendering and ‘acts of aggravated cyber harassment’ against the Algerian boxer and newly crowned Olympic gold medallist Imane Khelif, whom I must avoid misgendering myself, lest I find myself a target of prosecution. I shall therefore refer to this individual by the pronoun K, so as to avoid confusion with Elon’s X. French lawyers have developed a taste for associating high-profile names with even the most spurious complaints After K’s Olympic triumph, Rowling, the world’s most

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

How scandal brought down yet another Japanese leader

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida has announced he will be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Democratic party next month. This means yet another new leader, the 13th in my quarter century in the country (unless one of the previous incumbents fancies another go) but almost certainly not a radical new direction.  Whoever wins the LDP leadership election will become prime minister, as the party controls both houses of parliament, though no general election need be held until 2025. The announcement has been declared a ‘surprise’, but in truth, the resignation of a Japanese premier is never really that much of a surprise. It happens so regularly that there are jokes about

Alexander Horne

Israel needs to get out of the Gaza war

As the war in Gaza drags on into its eleventh month, and the conflict risks expanding into a regional war involving both Iran and its Lebanese proxies, it is surely time to question what would be a successful outcome for Israel. Militarily, the IDF has inflicted enormous damage on Hamas. Yet around 115 hostages continue to languish in Gaza and, in public relations terms, Israel is clearly losing the propaganda war.  One of Israel’s problems is that it has simply lost control of the narrative The Jewish state is increasingly accused of war crimes and its allies are more likely to call for a ceasefire than issue a stalwart defence

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

No EU migrant deal will stop the small boats

The sea lanes of Europe were busy last weekend. On Sunday, more than 700 migrants crossed the Channel from France to England, taking the total number this year to 18,342 – a 13 per cent increase on 2023. On the same day, 421 migrants in twelve boats disembarked on the Italian island of Lampedusa, and more have arrived since, swelling the numbers to over 500. The diversity of the nationalities of arrivals in Lampedusa is a fascinating and alarming snapshot of the crisis confronting Europe. The people stepping ashore hailed from Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana, Gambia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Liberia and Syria.  There are now too many gangs operating in Asia, the Middle East

Mark Nayler

Catalonia can’t escape the curse of independence 

In a low-key ceremony in the Catalan parliament on Saturday, Spain’s former health minister Salvador Illa was sworn in as the new president of Catalonia. Despite coming first in the regional elections on 12 May, Illa’s Socialists failed to secure a majority and have spent the last three months in cross-party negotiations. They finally struck a deal with the pro-independence ERC, which came third in the May election after losing 13 of its 33 seats.  Illa is the first unionist politician to become president of Catalonia since 2010, so there has been a lot of talk in Spanish media of a ‘nueva etapa’, or new era – a chance for Catalans

Terry Barnes

The city finally cracking down on the e-scooter menace

E-scooters are the bane of modern civilisation. They are the stealth bombers of our pavements. They are a silent danger to those who ride them, and a threat to life and limb for pedestrians and cyclists forced to share paths and roadways with them. They give accident and emergency departments unwanted business, thus imposing a significant social and financial cost on the wider community. There is nothing worse than being out for a walk with your young children in a park or on a shared pathway, only to be nearly mowed down by a speeding e-scooter rider you never heard coming, who sounded no warning, and who obviously doesn’t care

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Is the West finally seeing through Hamas’s lies?

On Saturday, when Israel attacked the al-Taba’een Hamas command centre in Gaza City, jihadi propagandists swung into action straight away. The group had placed the military facility inside a school compound for precisely this reason. Now it was time to cash in. At first, things seemed to be going according to plan. ‘Nearly 100 killed in Israeli strike on school, Gaza officials say,’ blared the Washington Post, a typical example. In the story, Mahmoud Bassal, a ‘Gaza civil defence spokesman’, was given space to hype up the attack without any indication that the Gaza civil defence is controlled by Hamas.  Hamas sat back and waited for the international outrage to place

Tuesday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Putin is panicking about Kursk

As Ukrainian forces continue to gain ground in the Russian region of Kursk, the humiliation for Vladimir Putin is growing. Faced with a mounting crisis, the Kremlin is responding in the only way it knows how: deflection and disinformation. A briefing by Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) published this morning argued that ‘Zelensky is taking crazy steps that threaten to escalate far beyond Ukraine.’ The SVR claimed that there is growing unhappiness in the US with the Ukrainian president over the incursion and that they are looking to replace him with a more malleable candidate – supposedly one who will better represent the West’s interests at future peace negotiations. The intelligence

Jawad Iqbal

Hong Kong’s justice system is an insult to democracy

Lord David Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the British lawyer who sits on Hong Kong’s highest court, needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. The territory’s court of final appeal has upheld verdicts and prison sentences against some of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy activists for taking part in a peaceful protest in 2019. The court ruling has been decried as ‘unjust’ by Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong before the territory was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The court unanimously agreed to uphold the convictions of seven activists who participated in the the unauthorised 2019 protests, during which 1.7 million people took to the streets

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s Olympic truce is well and truly over

Emmanuel Macron believes that the Paris Olympics have shown the world the ‘true face of France’. The Games were indeed a success, recovering from the disastrous first day, when saboteurs disabled the rail network and torrential rain turned the opening ceremony into a very damp squib. Macron must have feared the worst but the weather improved and crowds flocked to the iconic Parisian venues to watch two weeks of glorious sport. The tragedy for France is that Macron has empowered this rancorous left ‘We don’t want life to get back to normal,’ remarked Macron on Monday as he hosted an Olympic reception at the Elysée. He and millions of French

Charles Lipson

What caused the glitchy interview between Trump and Musk?

The lengthy interview between Donald Trump and Elon Musk on X last night began 40 minutes late, a technical glitch much of the media celebrated with unrestrained joy. They hate, hate, hate Elon Musk (despite his electric vehicles) – and they hate a media rival. They hate his transformation of Twitter, now X, into an open forum with very little censorship.  And, of course, they hate Musk’s foray into politics since he has taken the wrong side. Until now, Musk has largely avoided politics. He still describes himself as centrist who supported Obama; he said so in the talk with Trump. But Musk has committed what many pundits consider a mortal sin.

Monday

Jim Lawley

How does Spain solve a problem like Carles Puigdemont?

Last week saw dramatic events in Catalonia as Carles Puigdemont, wanted for almost seven years by Spanish justice for spearheading the region’s illegal declaration of independence in 2017, reappeared in the centre of Barcelona and delivered a rousing speech to some 3,500 of his adoring supporters. Then, just as suddenly, he disappeared – to the massive embarrassment of the several hundred policemen who were standing close by waiting to arrest him (though two of them, it seems, may have connived in the escape).    Puigdemont says that he’s now back in Waterloo, south of Brussels, where he’s made his home since 2017: the Belgian authorities refuse to extradite him to Spain. In

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Ukraine’s Kursk attack shows no signs of slowing down

It has been seven days since Ukraine began its attack on the Russian region of Kursk – with Ukrainian soldiers launching the first successful cross-border invasion of Russia since the second world war.  Still, Ukraine is showing no signs yet of slowing down. This morning, local authorities in the neighbouring Russian region of Belgorod announced that the evacuation of civilians from the area had begun. This is the second Russian region to evacuate since Kyiv’s invasion began last Tuesday. It is not just Russian resources that are being spread more thinly Addressing the escalating situation in a video on his social media channels, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote: ‘This morning is an

Sunday

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France’s view on the British riots is stunningly hypocritical

As the Olympics draw to a close tonight, two things have delighted the French. The first is that the Games turned out to be fairly successful, overlooking the weird opening ceremony. The other is the general amusement here that Britain managed to beat France at its own national summer sport: rioting. If Froggie-bashing has for years been a favourite pastime of the British, the scenes on the streets of Britain have given the French a chance to retaliate with relish. News channels gleefully interrupted their coverage of French Olympic triumphs for live feeds of the clashes on British streets. Pundits were ripped from enjoying the beach volleyball to launch a flotilla of op-eds and