Latest coverage
Where the Money Goes When You Stream a Song
Recorded music is growing again after a lost decade — but the path from your subscription fee to an artist's bank account is longer and stranger than most listeners imagine.
The Box Office Didn't Die. It Moved.
Cinema attendance never fully returned to its 2019 peak — but the story isn't decline. It's a global reshuffling of who goes to the movies, where, and for what.
The Streaming Wars Are Over. The Streaming Business Has Just Begun.
For a decade the question was who could add subscribers fastest. Now it's who can actually turn watching into profit — and the answers are reshaping what gets made.
When the Fed, the ECB and the Bank of Japan Disagree, the Whole World Feels It
Interest-rate divergence between the big three central banks moves currencies, capital and commodity prices everywhere else.
The Veto: How Five Countries Can Stop the United Nations, and Why That Was the Point
The Security Council's veto is the most criticised feature of the UN — and the reason the UN exists at all. An explainer.
How Sanctions Actually Work — and Why They So Often Don't
The world's most-used foreign policy tool sits between talking and shooting. Its record is more complicated than either its fans or critics admit.
One Island Prints the World's Advanced Chips. The Map Everyone Is Trying to Redraw
The most sophisticated objects humans make depend on a supply chain with single points of failure. Governments are spending fortunes to change that.
Washington's Midterms Are a Domestic Election With a Global Blast Radius
Control of Congress shapes trade, aid, alliances and tariffs. Here is how the rest of the world reads an American midterm.
World
Four Narrow Waterways Carry the World's Trade. Here Is What Happens When One Closes.
Suez, Panama, Hormuz, Malacca: the global economy runs through a handful of chokepoints most people never think about — until they jam.
The Veto: How Five Countries Can Stop the United Nations, and Why That Was the Point
The Security Council's veto is the most criticised feature of the UN — and the reason the UN exists at all. An explainer.
More People Are Displaced Than Ever. The System Meant to Protect Them Was Built for a Different Century.
Over 120 million people are forcibly displaced, on UNHCR's count. The 1951 rules that govern their treatment were written for post-war Europe.
Politics
How Sanctions Actually Work — and Why They So Often Don't
The world's most-used foreign policy tool sits between talking and shooting. Its record is more complicated than either its fans or critics admit.
Washington's Midterms Are a Domestic Election With a Global Blast Radius
Control of Congress shapes trade, aid, alliances and tariffs. Here is how the rest of the world reads an American midterm.
BRICS Keeps Adding Members. What the Expanding Club Can — and Cannot — Do
The bloc now spans major energy exporters and most of the Global South's heavyweights. Its ambitions are large; its machinery is loose.
Economy
When the Fed, the ECB and the Bank of Japan Disagree, the Whole World Feels It
Interest-rate divergence between the big three central banks moves currencies, capital and commodity prices everywhere else.
The World Owes Itself More Than Ever. Here Is How to Read the Global Debt Numbers
Global public and private debt runs well above world GDP on the IMF's ledger. The level matters less than three ratios inside it.
Bigger Than Aid, Steadier Than Investment: The Quiet Superpower of Remittances
Money sent home by migrant workers is one of the largest financial flows to the developing world — and one of the most expensive to move.
Tech & Science
One Island Prints the World's Advanced Chips. The Map Everyone Is Trying to Redraw
The most sophisticated objects humans make depend on a supply chain with single points of failure. Governments are spending fortunes to change that.
Three Ways to Govern AI: Brussels Writes Rules, Washington Writes Cheques, Beijing Writes Licences
The world is running three regulatory experiments on the same technology at once. Everyone else gets to choose a lane — or be chosen for.
The Internet Is a Seafloor Technology: Inside the Cable Network That Carries Almost Everything
Satellites get the headlines; roughly the entire internet crosses oceans through fibre the width of a garden hose.
Climate
What a COP Actually Decides: A Reader's Guide to the World's Most Misunderstood Meeting
Every year the climate summit produces headlines of triumph and betrayal. Knowing what the texts can and cannot do explains both.
The Energy Transition in Three Numbers: Record Solar, Record Investment, Stubborn Emissions
Clean energy is being built faster than any energy technology in history — and the fossil system it must replace is still growing in places.
The First Industry to Fully Believe in Climate Change Is the One That Prices It
Insurers retreating from floodplains and fire zones are running the world's largest live experiment in climate economics.
Entertainment
Where the Money Goes When You Stream a Song
Recorded music is growing again after a lost decade — but the path from your subscription fee to an artist's bank account is longer and stranger than most listeners imagine.
The Box Office Didn't Die. It Moved.
Cinema attendance never fully returned to its 2019 peak — but the story isn't decline. It's a global reshuffling of who goes to the movies, where, and for what.
The Streaming Wars Are Over. The Streaming Business Has Just Begun.
For a decade the question was who could add subscribers fastest. Now it's who can actually turn watching into profit — and the answers are reshaping what gets made.
More coverage
More People Are Displaced Than Ever. The System Meant to Protect Them Was Built for a Different Century.
Over 120 million people are forcibly displaced, on UNHCR's count. The 1951 rules that govern their treatment were written for post-war Europe.
The Energy Transition in Three Numbers: Record Solar, Record Investment, Stubborn Emissions
Clean energy is being built faster than any energy technology in history — and the fossil system it must replace is still growing in places.
BRICS Keeps Adding Members. What the Expanding Club Can — and Cannot — Do
The bloc now spans major energy exporters and most of the Global South's heavyweights. Its ambitions are large; its machinery is loose.
The Internet Is a Seafloor Technology: Inside the Cable Network That Carries Almost Everything
Satellites get the headlines; roughly the entire internet crosses oceans through fibre the width of a garden hose.
Bigger Than Aid, Steadier Than Investment: The Quiet Superpower of Remittances
Money sent home by migrant workers is one of the largest financial flows to the developing world — and one of the most expensive to move.
The First Industry to Fully Believe in Climate Change Is the One That Prices It
Insurers retreating from floodplains and fire zones are running the world's largest live experiment in climate economics.