The Intelligence from The Economist
Home disadvantage: risks in housing markets
Rich-world house prices survived the last fit of interest-rate rises; our correspondent lays out why they may not this time. Nine months after Austral...
National front-runner: who can beat Le Pen?
Marine Le Pen, party leader of France’s populist-right National Rally, starts her fourth presidential bid with a commanding lead. The country’s politi...
The mob rule: criminality consumes South Africa
An illicit shadow economy, rampant extortion and the capture of the criminal justice system: mafia members and tactics are eating away at the state. O...
Centre punch: Germany’s state-election shocker
Two more state-election results reveal surging support for both the far-right AfD and the populist-left Die Linke parties. Chancellor Friedrich Merz h...
Drone truth: Russia has the upper hand
After a visit to Ukraine last week, our defence editor reports on a new phase of the war as Kyiv and other civilian targets are bombarded by Russian m...
Rise and shine: Warsh’s Fed rate test
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates for the first time since July 2023. For the central bank’s new chair Kevin Warsh, that decision was a te...
The end of the world is AI? An existential threat
Is artificial intelligence becoming uncontrollably powerful? Our correspondent analyses whether a pause to breakneck development is possible or feasib...
Islamism in Britain: what is the threat?
Though a growing share of the British population is anxious about Islam, they have no reason to be. Islamism, a fringe ideology that believes governme...
Strait and narrowing: the Houthis’ striking advance
After years of stalemate, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis are taking territory, including on a Red Sea strait. We ask what has changed, and how the shift ...
The Weekend Intelligence: Shire folk
For 15 years, the British media dismissed Tommy Robinson as a far-right extremist. We kept him off our televisions, and out of our newspapers. Today...