World

Nothing much happens in South Dakota. It is a long way, in almost every sense, from the bright lights of New York, which was the epicentre of the spring coronavirus outbreak in North America. Now, however, the midwestern state, which was previously hailed for taking the ‘Swedish approach’ to coronavirus, is facing a virus rampaging out of control. So what went so badly wrong? And is there a lesson for the rest of us? When the pandemic first hit the US, the ‘Plains States’, including South Dakota, escaped relatively lightly. On 15 April, coronavirus daily diagnoses in South Dakota peaked at 181. The daily death count topped out on 6

It’s easy to see why so few western leaders have come to Emmanuel Macron’s defence: when they scrutinise extremists, they are accused of being ‘Islamophobes’. Since the French President’s speech last month about Islam in the West, he has been accused — by populist Muslim politicians such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Imran Khan, as well as publications that should know better, such as the New York Times — of being anti-Muslim. Yes, he was frank about the dangers of Islamism, but his speech was also a defence of what he called the ‘Islam of the Enlightenment’. Rarely for a political leader, he was able to point not just to

Hong Kong’s legislature has today moved one step closer to becoming a local branch of the Chinese Communist Party, after the disqualification of four of the most moderate, mainstream pro-democracy legislators resulted in the resignation en masse of every single pro-democracy legislator in protest. For the first time since 1997 the body now has no pro-democracy voices, marking yet another nail in the coffin of ‘one country, two systems.’ The four legislators who were ousted by Beijing – Alvin Yeung, Kwok Ka-ki, Dennis Kwok and Kenneth Leung – are hardly radical pro-independence activists. As lawyers and accountants, for years they have represented the pro-democracy establishment, working within the system to

There is, as our presumptive and somewhat presumptuous president Malaprop told us on Sunday, a time to plant and a time for the other thing. There is a time for healing, and a time for massing your advisers in a garden centre and taking your enemies to court for stealing the election. A time for introducing your granddaughter as your dead son, and a time for calling upon the endorsement of ‘General Stanley McGeneral’. As it is written in the Book of Roger McGuinn, ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.’ Turn, turn, turn: Now it is time for the Democrats

This new world disorder is distorting our vision, so please excuse an apparently fatuous question. Is Emmanuel Macron turning into Donald Trump? As the 45th President of the US prepares to step down from the world stage he may be leaving behind another disciple – Emmanuel Macron (Trump would say a ‘mini-me’). The comparison is audacious, and their bracketing together would irk both. But Macron appears to be on a trajectory bringing him closer to the politician whose style and substance he has spent much time deriding. Macron is of course a more intellectual and urbane individual than Trump. But in style and increasingly in substance the resemblance is growing.