Viktor Orban is set to continue his illiberal reign

IN 1988 a dissident Hungarian university graduate wrote a letter to George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist, asking for help obtaining a scholarship to Oxford University. In the letter, which has recently resurfaced, the young Viktor Orban said he wanted to study the “rebirth of civil society”. He got the scholarship. Thirty years on, Mr Orban, now prime minister, looks likely to win his third election in a row on April 8th. But he is busy throttling the independent civil society he once championed.

Mr Orban’s right-wing populist party, Fidesz, is far ahead in the polls. The divided opposition is bickering over whose candidates should step down in local constituencies, in order to unite behind one anti-Fidesz candidate per district. (That tactic led to an opposition win in a former Fidesz stronghold in a mayoral by-election in February.) Nationally, no one is capable of taking on Mr Orban. The nationalist Jobbik party, which has tacked towards the centre, will probably take second place. The...Continue reading

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Bavaria’s conservatives are embracing identity politics

Bavarian villages oppose Heimat change

THE Rittbitten is as characteristic of Erlstätt, a village in southern Bavaria, as the onion dome of its church and the Alpine peaks on its horizon. Each year villagers gather at the Gasthaus Fliegl restaurant, where, accompanied by a brass band in lederhosen, the religious Saint George Society invites locals to join an Easter Monday horseback ride. It is respect for the old ways, says Andreas Fliegl, that has made this place so successful: “We have the lowest unemployment in Germany.” He is thinking of entering his restaurant in a competition, created by Marcus Söder, the new Bavarian premier, to find the state’s best “Heimat inn”. Heimat means home, but also tradition, belonging and place. In Bavaria, it is the front line of a big political experiment.

At the general election last September the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) did best in...Continue reading

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Russian protests over the Kemerovo fire are already burning out

WITHIN a day, fire crews doused the blaze that killed 64 people on March 25th at the Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo, a Siberian mining hub. More than a week later, the political embers still smoulder. A national day of mourning was declared, social-media avatars went black and marches were held across the country. In Kemerovo, protesters demanded the resignation of the governor, Aman Tuleyev. On April 2nd, he said he would go.

Though lethal disasters are common in Russia, the fire in Kemerovo seems destined to enter a different category of national tragedy, alongside the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000 and the Beslan hostage crisis in 2004. More than 40 of the victims were children, many trapped inside a cinema watching the animated film “Sherlock Gnomes”. Some wrote panicked messages on social media. Others called parents who could do nothing to breach the fire separating them. Video footage from the mall showed patrons leaping from windows to escape...Continue reading

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France’s leakiest border is in the Indian Ocean

MANY Europeans feel their homelands have too many immigrants. In countries like Germany, as many as 15% of the population are foreigners. But on Mayotte, a small French island in the Indian Ocean with a population of 256,500, the share is more than half. Immigration has led to violent protests and a general strike, bringing the island to a standstill since February. Locals have begun rounding up suspected illegal immigrants, and the island is descending into chaos.

“Every night ten boats carrying at least 30 people arrive on our shores,” says Mansour Kamardine, Mayotte’s deputy in France’s National Assembly. “It is absolutely intolerable.” Many of those arriving are pregnant women. Every year, 70% of the 10,000 births in the island’s sole maternity hospital are to illegal migrants. France’s policy of droit du sol (birthright citizenship) means they are entitled to French nationality. French officials are considering making the hospital a non-French...Continue reading

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The EU guarantees its citizens’ data rights, in theory

IN THE wake of the scandal over the unauthorised use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, a campaign consultant, some Americans are looking enviously at the European Union, whose privacy laws are the global gold standard. Rights over personal data are enshrined in the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. European citizens have the right to have their data processed fairly, to know what data an organisation holds about them and what it is doing with those data. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a law strengthening data protection across the EU, goes into force at the end of May (see article). Yet in practice, when European citizens try to exercise such rights, they tend to end up mired in bureaucracy.

Take the case of Paul-Olivier Dehaye. In December 2016 Mr Dehaye, a Belgian mathematician, e-mailed Facebook asking for a copy of...Continue reading

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Poland’s conservatives are pushing one of Europe’s toughest abortion laws

Their bodies, their selves

AT 13 weeks of pregnancy, Marta, a young woman in Warsaw, learned that her baby had Down’s syndrome and life-threatening defects. After a procedural obstacle course (including a visit to a psychiatrist), she was allowed to undergo a legal abortion, one of just 1,000 or so in Poland every year. Poland has some of Europe’s tightest restrictions on abortion, allowing it only when the mother’s life is at risk, or in cases of rape or severe prenatal defects. Many women turn to illegal abortions or go abroad, often to Germany.

Now the restrictions could get even tighter. Legislation proposed by a pro-life organisation, backed by the Catholic church, would ban abortion even for severe prenatal defects. The Polish parliament’s committee for human rights gave the bill the go-ahead last month, although the Council of Europe and UN experts have urged lawmakers to reject it.

The proposed restrictions suit the social conservatism of the...Continue reading

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The EU is tolerating—and enabling—authoritarian kleptocracy in Hungary

IT IS a miserable day for a political stunt. Rain drips ceaselessly from the stands of the cathedral-like stadium in Felcsut, the home village of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s football-mad prime minister. Bescarved fans huddle for warmth as they queue to watch their team, Puskas Academy, take on a local rival. Across the street Laszlo Szilagyi, an election candidate for Dialogue, an opposition party, and a few colleagues have gathered outside Mr Orban’s modest cottage. Sausages bearing the names of national oligarchs are draped over the garden fence, in an apparent nod to an old Hungarian aphorism that mocks the wealthy.

For the likes of Mr Szilagyi, Felcsut is emblematic of everything that has gone wrong under Mr Orban. The stadium, completed in 2014, cost a fortune; a nearby tourist train, reopened in 2016 with European Union funding, runs half-empty most of the time. Kleptocratic elites bleed public services while Fidesz, the ruling party, chips away at Hungary’s democracy.

In some...Continue reading

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The unexpected victory of Carlos Alvarado

ON EASTER Sunday the streets of San José erupted with revelry and relief. A long and bitter presidential election campaign had pitted a fiercely fundamentalist former gospel singer against a liberal candidate of the centre left. The liberal won decisively. A jubilant crowd waved banners of country, party and the LGBT movement, which had good reason to cheer his victory. Dancing continued into the night.

Costa Rica’s election may have been the first national election anywhere to turn on the question of gay rights. That became the biggest issue in January, after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which is based in San José, issued a ruling obliging Costa Rica (and other Latin American countries) to legalise same-sex marriage. The judgment provoked an outcry in Costa Rica (most other countries barely noticed it), and propelled the two candidates with the strongest views on the issue into the run-off. Fabricio Alvarado, of the evangelical National Restoration party, vowed to disobey the...Continue reading

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Brazil’s Lula and government by judges

BRAZIL’S supreme court was damned whatever it did. On April 4th, after 11 hours of debate, it rejected by six votes to five a plea by lawyers for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the country’s former president, that their client should not be sent to prison following his conviction last year for corruption until he has exhausted all possible appeals.

That decision will be seen by his supporters as endorsing a political vendetta, potentially damaging the legitimacy of a presidential election in October. Lula leads in the opinion polls, by a wide margin. But upholding Lula’s request would have had big negatives, too. It would have reversed the court’s own doctrine, established by the same narrow margin just two years ago, that the guilty can be jailed after their sentence is confirmed on first appeal. And, according to many prosecutors and judges, it would have sucked the life out of the four-year anti-corruption probe known as Lava Jato (Car Wash).

Lava Jato has revealed massive graft...Continue reading

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Peru discovers the value of moss

TO THE Quechua-speaking subsistence farmers who live in the higher reaches of the Peruvian Andes, the sphagnum moss that upholsters the land near their villages is a nuisance. They burn it away to clear land for planting traditional crops, like potatoes. Now some have realised that the spongy vegetation can be worth more than the tubers, which sometimes cost more to grow than they fetch in the market.

Moss is an internationally traded commodity. Canada, the biggest exporter, sold more than 1m tonnes of decomposed moss from peat bogs last year for around $337m. The market for the sort of moss Peru produces, harvested live and then dried, is much smaller, around 5,300 tonnes a year. But it is growing fast. The absorbency of moss makes it useful for potting exotic plants like orchids. Because of its acidity, farmers add it to the soil in which they grow such foods as blueberries.

New uses are adding to demand. Moss is popular for “living walls” that are sprouting in European...Continue reading

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The death and cruel life of Efraín Ríos Montt

The deceased despot and some of his victims

NOWHERE in the Americas was the cold war fought more brutally than in Guatemala. After the CIA toppled a reformist democratic government in the name of anti-communism in 1954, a long line of military dictators followed, engendering left-wing guerrilla movements that they proceeded to crush. Efraín Ríos Montt, who died this month at 91, headed a military junta for 17 of the bloodiest months of this campaign, in 1982-83. His life tells the story of his country’s halting progress from horror to democracy and the rule of law.

In his way, General Ríos Montt was a reformer. In 1974 he ran for president for the tame opposition. Fraud denied him victory. Perhaps that made him contemptuous of such electoral fictions. “I am a true political leader…because I am here without your votes,” he proclaimed after the officers’ coup that installed him as president in 1982. He stood out from his fellow dictators, above all, for his...Continue reading

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Anthem May Win by Sitting Out Wave of Health Insurance Deals

Anthem may be smart in sitting out the recent deal-making in insurance. Some proposed deals haven’t been popular with shareholders, and approvals may be difficult. Anthem can always make a move later.

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Could China Scuttle Qualcomm's $44 Billion NXP Deal?

NXP Semiconductors is trading roughly 10% below Qualcomm’s offer, reflecting investors’ concerns about the deal going through, but the discount ignores NXP’s leading market position.

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for action on climate change

AMONG the many things that divide Democrats from Republicans is climate change. Fully 73% of Democratic voters say they are worried about global warming, compared with 32% of Republicans. Yet last month Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York (pictured above), co-authored a letter with a Democratic colleague urging President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to purge climate change from the list of threats in the National Security Strategy. Another ten Republicans signed it (as did 94 Democrats). Many are members of the Climate Solutions Caucus in the House of Representatives. 

The caucus is as atypical as a climate-friendly Republican. It was dreamed up in 2016 by two south Florida congressmen. Ted Deutch, a Democrat, and Carlos Curbelo, a Republican, both worried about the damage global-warming-induced sea-level rise was visiting on their coastal districts. Having served on the House ethics committee, Mr Deutch noticed that divvying up seats evenly between the two sides fostered civility. So he and Mr Curbelo decided...Continue reading

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A trade war between America and China takes shape

Insurance and the gig economy

THE rise of the gig economy means not only workers, but those who insure them, are having to adapt. Take third-party liability insurance—the sort that would pay out if, for instance, a courier hit and injured a pedestrian. An employee driving a company van would be covered by a standard commercial-insurance policy. But “gig” couriers, working when they wish and using their own cars, must often insure themselves. Even if they have personal cover, it will not usually pay out for accidents that happen while they are driving for work.

Among the firms seeking to fill this gap is Zego, which sprang up to serve scooter couriers such as those working for Deliveroo, a food-delivery service. Deliveroo and its rivals require proof of insurance from couriers, but had no easy way to check it was valid. Couriers, meanwhile, were often loth to pay stiff premiums. Harry Franks, formerly of Deliveroo and co-founder in 2016 of Zego, spotted an opportunity and convinced insurers that a different model could be...Continue reading

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The choice of a boss for the New York Fed ends in a familiar way

John Williams: a neutral answer

THE president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is perhaps the second most important person in America’s financial hierarchy, behind only the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Unlike the presidents of the other regional Reserve Banks, he sits permanently on the committee in Washington, DC that sets interest rates. The New York Fed supervises Wall Street and, during financial crises, often gathers bankers to hash out a fix or to impose one on them. On April 3rd it was announced that John Williams would be next in line to take charge of the institution, replacing William Dudley.

Mr Williams has led the San Francisco Fed since 2011, when his predecessor in that job, Janet Yellen, moved to Washington. He is best known for his academic contributions to monetary policy. In particular, his estimates of the “neutral rate” of interest, at which money is neither tight nor loose, are regularly cited. In recent years he has appeared moderately...Continue reading

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Germany’s biggest lender is in the doldrums

No walk in the park

JOHN CRYAN has spent almost three years on the thankless task of revitalising Germany’s biggest bank. Deutsche Bank’s shares fetch around €11 ($13.50) each. That is less than half their price when he became joint chief executive in July 2015 (he became sole boss 11 months later) and an eighth of the peak in Deutsche’s pre-crisis pomp (see chart). Paul Achleitner, the chairman of Deutsche’s supervisory board—perhaps sharing investors’ impatience, perhaps to shore up his own position—has reportedly sounded out possible replacements for Mr Cryan.

The two men are also said to...Continue reading

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Fake news flourishes when partisan audiences crave it

THE theories lurk in odd corners of the web, occasionally bubbling into broader public consciousness. That President Donald Trump is working with Robert Mueller, for example, and preparing a hammer blow against the true threats to American democracy: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their “deep state” allies. Such fabrications are not new. Yet the capacity of fake news to influence the outcome of political votes seems to have grown, and is provoking a backlash. France, for example, may soon allow judges to censor fake-news stories during election seasons. Malaysia’s government says it may jail those who publish or circulate fake news. Such steps risk enabling governments to limit legitimate speech (on April 3rd India’s government abandoned similar plans after widespread criticism). What is more, they are unlikely to do much to stem the flow of disinformation so long as there remains an audience of readers hungry for fakery.

Outrage over fake news is overwhelmingly targeted at the supply side:...Continue reading

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Economics renames itself to appeal to international students

ECONOMISTS do not much like their discipline being dubbed the dismal science. Some American universities are paying more attention to the noun than to the adjective. The reason is not philosophical, but pragmatic. Foreign STEM graduates (the acronym stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics) can get visa extensions for three years of practical training (ie, work). Those from other disciplines are allowed only a year.

Two more years working in America means more earnings. It also means a better chance of finding an employer willing to sponsor an application for an H-1B visa, the main starting-point for skilled foreign workers who hope to settle permanently. In 2012 the Department of Homeland Security expanded the list of STEM courses. Now any reasonably crunchy economics degree can count as STEM with a tweak to its federal classification code, from economics (45.0601) to econometrics and quantitative economics (45.0603).

Economics departments appear to be catching on....Continue reading

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The next Japan is not China but Thailand

TWENTY years ago Thailand was the most torrid of emerging markets. After a spell of overheated growth and wide current-account deficits, it had exhausted its foreign-exchange reserves and lost its currency’s peg to the dollar. In the aftermath, inflation approached 10% and the Bank of Thailand (BoT) struggled to restore confidence in the baht. In a widely cited paper by Romain Rancière of the University of Southern California and two co-authors, Thailand was used as a stark illustration that dynamism and danger, fast growth and occasional crises, went hand in hand.

A few of today’s emerging markets can still set the pulse racing—Turkey, for example, has combined breakneck growth with double-digit inflation and a worrying slide in the lira. But Thailand is not one of them. Private investment expanded by only 1.7% last year. Thailand’s sovereign bonds yield less than America’s. Inflation is once again a worry, not because it is too high, but because it is so stubbornly low. Consumer prices rose by...Continue reading

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American states face a revenue crisis

The budget’s underwater too

POLITICIANS love to talk about spending. To simplify, Democrats win leftist votes by calling it investment and promising more of it. Republicans secure conservative votes by calling it waste and pledging to make cuts. Talking candidly about how to collect the revenues that fund government is more ticklish, especially when the pain is likely to be broadly shared.

This may help to explain why a surprising number of American states are facing a revenue crisis, even as the broader economy enters its ninth year of recovery. With unemployment at a 17-year low and stockmarkets near all-time highs, one might expect state coffers to be overflowing. Yet many states find themselves struggling to collect enough revenue to balance their budgets—as most are legally obliged to do. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, 27 states saw their revenues fall below expectations last year. While states have been grappling with...Continue reading

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A new season of “Roseanne” for the Trump era

How about, we get pizza and argue about Trump?

ONE of the odder things about President Donald Trump is that, though he cheers supporters up greatly, he has no discernible sense of humour. Rarely seen laughing spontaneously, Mr Trump’s emotional range runs from bleak (“American carnage”), to scorn (“so stupid”), and a salesman’s boosterism (“Folks are going to be very happy”). One of the sadder things about the Trump era is watching American families and communities being pulled apart by political differences. On the face of it, then, ABC television took a risk when it commissioned a new season of “Roseanne”, a popular sitcom about a blue-collar clan’s trials and tribulations, built around the premise that, 21 years after the show last aired, its fictional family is now divided by Trump-love and -loathing.

The gamble paid off. Fully 18.5m people watched the season premiere on March 27th and another 10.9m saw it streamed, recorded or repeated...Continue reading

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Donald Trump takes a hard turn on immigration

A FEW days into 2018, President Donald Trump pondered a recorded fall in the number of people apprehended on the border with Mexico and liked what he saw. Attempted border crossings are “way, way down” because migrants know they will fail, he told a bipartisan delegation from Congress. As if torn between claiming credit for intimidating toughness and promoting his signature promise to fortify the border with Mexico, he mused that migrants were being stopped by land, air and sea: “But we do need the wall, and we need more border security anyway.”

That was then. Less than three months later Mr Trump sees a very different border. On the defensive after some bad headlines, a jump in border crossings and agitated by Fox News TV reports of a “caravan” of Central American asylum-seekers and activists making its way through Mexico towards America, the president fired off several dawn choruses of tweets, denouncing “our “Weak Laws” Border”. In Twitter messages that in some cases...Continue reading

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Orders to local news anchors cause much embarrassment

ONE local television anchor compared the experience to being a prisoner-of-war recording a proof-of-life video. Others called it merely embarrassing. Either way, scores of TV newsreaders at local stations squirmed after colleagues at CNN, the cable-news network, caught wind of a media-bashing political commentary being run on outlets owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, America’s largest operator of local television stations. The look of the spots is glossy, with nicely-coiffed television anchors leaving the safety of their desks to stand directly before the cameras, before delivering a heartfelt attack on the ethics of much of the news media. A leaked corporate memo instructed: “Talent should dress in jewel tones”, while avoiding hues associated with elections, such as red, blue or purple.

Sinclair insists that the spot was a non-political appeal to viewers to trust local TV news. An early version of the script accused “national media outlets” of running untrue stories without...Continue reading

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In Louisiana, criminal-justice reform is badly needed

The wrong southern hospitality

THE hard thing about criminal-justice reform is that it involves criminals, who do not always behave as they should. Yet there are also costs to ignoring reform, measured in ruined lives, body bags and dollars and cents.

That was the conundrum faced by Louisiana when a group of Republican and Democratic legislators passed reforms intended to push the state off the top spot on some less-than-desirable charts. Start with incarceration rates. Louisiana has long tried to jail its way to public safety. The state imprisons its citizens at about twice the American average, which is an achievement. America’s incarceration rate is an outlier in the rich world, being about five times higher than Britain’s (which is more punitive than many European neighbours).

All that locking up and throwing away of keys has not made Louisiana safer. The state’s murder rate is America’s highest. Nor does the state, one of the poorest in...Continue reading

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Senator Chris Murphy has become a leader on gun-control

GUN violence is no laughing matter, especially at James Hillhouse High School in New Haven, which lost a star footballer to the blight. Yet a roundtable Chris Murphy recently convened there on the issue included this moment of levity. The 44-year-old senator from Connecticut had been asked what he thought of a Republican proposal, endorsed by President Donald Trump, to arm teachers. “Who here thinks it’s a bad idea?” the fresh-faced politician replied, and 200 teenagers were soon rolling in the aisles. It wasn’t just that everyone raised a hand. It was the preposterousness of the notion that issuing stressed-out inner-city teachers with firearms, along with their parking permits and keys to the staff bathroom, could ever make sense. “It’s an idea with no basis in reality,” Mr Murphy said.

Since the shooting of 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida, in February, many Americans have experienced a similar lifting of the veil on the gun lobby and its self-serving arguments. In response...Continue reading

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Smucker's Bite-Sized Pet-Food Deal Goes Down Easy

Not all pet-food acquisitions are the same. J.M. Smucker’s $1.7 billion deal for Ainsworth Pet Nutrition looks like a winner.

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The Big Risk of a Trade War: Inflation

There is never a good time to start a trade war, but the shots exchanged by the U.S. and China could be particularly troubling as they stoke a fear that has already rocked markets: inflation.

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CBS-Viacom Fight Is Fixed

Media titans don’t like to lose their empires. But if they must, they prefer to do so on their own terms. For Les Moonves, the long-time chairman and CEO of CBS, the possibility of doing so is rapidly dwindling.

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Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s death, a divided America

FIFTY years ago, Shaw, a historically black neighbourhood ten blocks from the White House, was ablaze. The spark had been lit nearly 900 miles away. On April 4th 1968 Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. After the civil-rights leader’s murder, riots gripped more than 100 cities. Shaw, a centre of black culture whose Howard Theatre had fostered the careers of Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, burned like a city at war. By the riots’ end 1,200 buildings were damaged and 12 people were dead. And more than life and property were imperilled. The whole project of civil rights seemed to be on trial. The year before, calls to tear down race barriers had both stoked, and been hurt by, massive riots in black quarters of Detroit and Newark.

In February 1968 the Kerner Commission, created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate race riots, had warned that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black and one white—separate and unequal”. The commission...Continue reading

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Spotify makes its stockmarket debut

Even After a Tumble, the Stock Market's Price Isn't Right

The stock market’s volatility is worth suffering through if there are gains to be made at the end. Right now, the payoff for that suffering may be disappointing.

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China Targets Detroit, Hits Tesla and BMW Instead

China’s apparent threat to tax U.S.-made cars more heavily would hit a different diplomatic target from the one intended: Germany. The one U.S. car maker that would be heavily affected is Tesla.

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Airlines, Not Boeing, Will Feel China Tariff Threat First

Even if U.S. and Chinese tariff proposals never come to fruition, a hit to sentiment—and economic growth in general—could have a direct impact on the trans-Pacific air travel, a fast growing, but highly competitive part of the airline business.

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How Trump's Tariffs Could Really Hurt China

The Trump administration has detailed $50 billion of tariffs on Chinese imports ranging from television sets to grenade launchers. China has vowed to respond in kind. Is a full-scale trade war now inevitable?

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At AT&T Trial, Government Sends a Message About Future Deals

The Justice Department kicked off its antitrust case against AT&T by calling a string of media executives to the witness stand. Their presence, meant to expose the dangers of mega media mergers, is a warning from the government that it will look hard at future deals.

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Spotify's High Valuation Is Bait For Other Tech Unicorns

The public market thinks Spotify is worth almost $27 billion, well above private valuations, which could tempt other big-brand tech companies to follow the same IPO path.

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Black boys are the least likely of any group to escape poverty

THAT African Americans are poorer than the American average is well-established. In 2016, the median household income of black Americans was $39,500 compared to $65,000 for non-Hispanic white Americans. Lower parental income and education levels are often cited as reasons for this gap. But a new paper suggests that there is more to it than that. It finds that black men fare worse economically than white men even if they are raised in households with similar incomes and educated similarly. A black boy brought up in a wealthy family is as likely to become poor in adulthood as he is to remain prosperous.

The study, by Raj Chetty at NBER, Maggie Jones at the Census Bureau and two colleagues is notable for its size and sweep: it involves 20m people born between 1978 and 1983–about 94% of all of those born over that period now resident in America. The authors use a range of data on child, parental and neighborhood characteristics to look at the impact of race on economic mobility over a generation.

It finds that a black man born to...Continue reading

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Tesla's Model 3 Is no Model T

Tesla made 2,020 Model 3 sedans in the final week of the first quarter. Yet even that final, frantic week’s production fell short of the electric-car marker’s own guidance—a familiar pattern.

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Disney vs. Comcast: Stay Tuned for Sky Bidding

Antitrust remedies proposed by 21st Century Fox should put it on an equal regulatory footing to Comcast in the battle for pay-TV giant Sky.

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Winnie Madikizela-Mandela leaves behind a complicated legacy

THE death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela came as a shock to South Africans. At 81 she looked as radiant as ever, her taut skin and chic outfits belying her age. She still had the will to fight, taking the estate of her late ex-husband, Nelson Mandela, to court (she lost an appeal in January). Just last month she appeared at a voter-registration campaign for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), grinning alongside Cyril Ramaphosa, the president. But, unbeknown to many, she had long been ill. Ms Madikizela-Mandela died on April 2nd in Johannesburg. Outside her home in Soweto, mourners sang old struggle songs into the night. She will receive a state funeral on April 14th.

Ms Madikizela-Mandela was one of a shrinking number of heroes from South Africa’s struggle to end repressive white rule. She came from what is now Eastern Cape and, against the odds, became a social worker at a Soweto hospital. During that time she met Mr Mandela, whom she married in 1958. But they would spend only a...Continue reading

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Where Investors Find Refuge From Tech's Storm

Europe doesn’t have a Facebook, an Amazon, a Netflix or a Google, but that lack of tech prowess is suddenly a virtue for investors.

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Why Consumer Spending Growth Is Slowing

Banks are becoming more cautious lending to Americans despite a strong labor market and rising incomes.

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Ralph Northam pushes for Medicaid expansion in Virginia

RALPH NORTHAM, Virginia’s new Democratic governor, soundly beat his Republican rival, Ed Gillespie, by harnessing antipathy for Donald Trump. Virginia was the only Southern state that the president lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Mr Northam's landslide win in November was also due to his promise to bring 300,000 uninsured Virginians under the umbrella of Medicaid, a federal health-care programme for the poor and disabled.

The governor's young administration now has a problem: there is no consensus in the Republican-controlled legislature for his chief policy goal. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government would pay 90% of the $2bn a year cost of expanding Medicaid; the state would raise the remaining 10% by taxing hospitals. 

The low-key paediatric neurologist has moved closer in the first three months of his term to implementing this initiative than his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, also a Democrat, did in four years. But Mr Northam has yet to close the deal—even with an unexpected boost from Republican...Continue reading

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Get Ready for Another LNG Boom

Natural gas that is supercooled and shipped around the world may be the only big growth market for the fossil-fuels industry.

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Why Tumbling Stocks Didn't Tank Treasury Yields

Treasury yields rose in the first quarter even as stocks posted losses. It is a far cry from what happened the last time stocks hit a rough patch.

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Why Trump Won't Touch Moonshine

The bankruptcy of the East Coast’s biggest oil refiner has raised uncomfortable questions around the politically charged market for ethanol.

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Healthy Skepticism About Walmart and Humana

There is a method to the madness of retailers that want to buy health insurers, but Wall Street still isn’t crazy about it.

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Retailers' Tariff Troubles May Undo Recent Gains

Tariffs on imports from China threaten to wipe out the benefits of tax cuts and a strong holiday season.

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