The moon was high over the avenue that stretches away from St Peter’s, yet a stream of visitors was still issuing from the great basilica. Inside, the body of Pope Benedict XVI was laid out for people to pay their respects before his funeral on January 5th. Vatican officials were reportedly taken aback by the size of the crowds. On the first day, January 2nd, visitors had to queue for three hours. By the next evening, they were still waiting for 40 minutes.
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What the great reopening means for China—and the world
This year’s biggest economic event is already under way
The Age of Inflation
oming on the heels of the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, the inflation crisis of the past two years seemed to catch much of the world by surprise. After three decades in which prices grew slowly across the world’s advanced economies, suddenly the United Kingdom, the United States, and the eurozone were contending with near or above double-digit inflation.
El problema migratorio cubano no es de normas, es y será económico
El director de asuntos consulares y de cubanos residentes en el exterior del Minrex, Ernesto Soberón, ha declarado a la prensa estatal que “una relación migratoria más normal contribuiría a disminuir el potencial migratorio”.
Israel’s new government will test the ties with Arab states
Even a right-wing cabinet stocked with ultra-nationalists may not derail the deepening relationships
China is overwhelmed, yet an even bigger covid wave may be coming
The transition back to normal life is proving difficult
Outside the People’s Hospital of Dezhou, a small city in the coastal province of Shandong, an old woman on a stretcher, breathing quickly with her eyes closed, is unloaded from an ambulance. A few minutes later she is put back into it. Her family members start calling other hospitals. There is no room at this one.
Republicans struggle to elect a speaker of the House
American and British conservatives are distinct species. But in one respect—a cannibalistic impulse to kill and consume their leaders—they are similar. On January 3rd Kevin McCarthy, the Republican congressman who for the better part of a decade has yearned to be elected speaker of the House of Representatives, found himself on the receiving end. Though Republicans secured a narrow majority in midterm elections in November, a contingent of hardline congressmen have banded together to deny their party leader the absolute majority he needs to obtain the speakership.
Pope Benedict XVI was an iron fist in a white glove
Pattering in the forceful, tumultuous wake of John Paul II, Benedict XVI had a hard act to follow. In 2005 there were few expectations. Or rather, there were expectations of the wrong kind: that the man who from 1981 had been prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (cdf) would rule the Roman Catholic church like an elderly headmaster, waspish and intolerant, with the fires of a new Inquisition gleaming in those pale blue eyes.
Starlink’s performance in Ukraine has ignited a new space race
Never mind the moon; look to low-Earth orbit.
“IT’S A FACT: we’re in a space race.” So said Bill Nelson, the boss of NASA, on January 1st. If China managed to land on the Moon before America returned there, he warned, it could seize lunar resources for itself, and even tell America: “Keep out, we’re here, this is our territory.”
How China’s reopening will disrupt the world economy
For the better part of three years—1,016 days to be exact—China will have been closed to the world. Most foreign students left the country at the start of the pandemic. Tourists have stopped visiting. Chinese scientists have stopped attending foreign conferences. Expat executives were barred from returning to their businesses in China. So when the country opens its borders on January 8th, abandoning the last remnants of its “zero-covid” policy, the renewal of commercial, intellectual and cultural contact will have huge consequences, mostly benign.