World

Coronavirus rates in Israel right now are among the highest in the world. But that didn’t stop the Israeli government from lifting its strict lockdown and, yesterday, reopening most of its retail economy. Non-essential shops, shopping centres, libraries and museums reopened to the general public after being closed for more than six weeks, despite the fact that daily cases and hospitalisation numbers remain at pretty much the same levels as when the lockdown began. The streets were packed as people tried to catch up on nearly two months’ worth of shopping. The reason – or, perhaps, the justification – for this reopening is Israel’s successful vaccination programme. An astonishing 90

The world these days is so blasè about the destruction of democracy that no one even thinks it worthy of comment that an important free country such as Italy has not had an elected prime minister since the last one, Silvio Berlusconi, was forced to resign in 2011 during the Eurozone crisis after a palace coup orchestrated by Brussels, Berlin and Paris. That is ten years without a prime minister chosen by the Italian people at the ballot box in a general election. The electoral system, currently a hybrid of first past the post and proportional representation, is partly to blame. But the real reason is the Italians. They seem

In 2021, it’s not uncommon to hope that everyone involved in an argument can lose, or to suspect that pretty much everyone is in the wrong. So it is with the long-running saga involving Australia’s mainstream media outlets, its government, and the tech giants, which has led this week to Facebook banning users from sharing posts from Australian media on its platform. The ban has been badly implemented: it has led to performative outrage at the apparent censorship from the outlets themselves, and has clumsily also included official government agencies and some of Facebook’s own pages. But, leaving aside the errors in the rollout, the wails from Australia’s media should

Japan finally began its Covid-19 vaccination programme this week after a consignment of 60,000 vials arrived by charter flight from Europe. Medical staff will be first in line to be jabbed, followed by Japan’s innumerable seniors (presumably starting with the super-centenarians), then those with pre-existing conditions, and finally the general population. A rapid and successful roll out is seen as a last chance to save the summer Olympics and with it, probably, the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. But a whole host of problems is making that outcome look decidedly optimistic. Firstly, there’s a shortage of syringes capable of extracting the full six shots from each vial: the standard

It is a rant worthy of Nigel Farage in his pomp. One of the leading figures within the European Parliament has launched a blistering tirade against the Commission’s ineptitude in securing vaccines. The EU is a world leader in making inoculations, he points out. And yet there is a shortage of supply in every country within the Union. The measures taken to fix that so far have been ‘symbolic,’ ‘insufficient’ and sometimes even ‘counterproductive’. Worse, there has been a shocking lack of accountability, with no one held responsible for the failure. The critic? None other than the arch federalist, scourge of Brexiteers, and hero of Lib Dem party conferences, Guy

‘Scotland,’ declared the Times in 1856, is ‘manifestly a country in want of a grievance.’ The same could be said of Catalonia, which held regional elections this week. Catalonia spent much of the nineteenth century adding to its store of grievances. In 1885 a deputation of politicians travelled to Madrid in a fruitless attempt to interest Spain’s government in a comprehensive list of their region’s ‘greuges’ (Catalan for grievances). A century later the post-Franco democratic settlement for Catalonia attempted to right these historical wrongs once and for all by granting the region unprecedented powers of self-government. Since then Catalonia’s autonomy has increased even further. Today, amongst other competencies, it has