World

This week France announced a €100 billion (£89 billion) stimulus package equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP over two years. It might seem churlish to ask why the French government has put so much money on the table. To save the French economy, of course. But there’s a graver concern in France that has lately come to the fore. But first, some context to the ‘France Revival’ stimulus programme. It adds to the most generous furlough scheme of any developed economy, which in the spring was already calculated to push France’s debt to GDP ratio over 121 per cent, according to France’s budget statistics. The rationale is that France’s economy

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed that tests showed ‘unequivocally’ that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a military-grade novichok nerve agent. Germany became involved in the affair when Navalny was transported to the Charité hospital in Berlin two weeks ago. But, while Berlin decided to reveal the test result and called on the Russian government to provide answers about what happened to Navalny, this could easily become a typical case of German diplomacy. Critics of the government in Germany like to call its actions on the international level ‘zahnlos’, which can be translated as ‘toothless’ – its actions lack teeth to hurt another power, or at least leave

To complete the Hajj is the pinnacle of Islamic worship, required once in the lifetime of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey. In its 1,400-year history, the annual pilgrimage has been cancelled dozens of times, by wars, political strife and pandemics. As I found out when I made the journey, it is a swirling sea of humanity: some 2.5 million visiting Mecca over a few days, from all over the world. When the Covid crisis came, worship was suspended. But then something was attempted that would have once seemed impossible: carrying on the tradition, but under digitally monitored social distancing. The results were extraordinary. A pilgrimage famous for

Could war finally be coming to the eastern Mediterranean? It’s not as excitable a question as it might first appear. In an article titled, ‘Erdogan’s calculated war,‘ the German newspaper Die Welt quoted sources from the Turkish military saying that president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had recently ordered his generals to sink a Greek warship, without inflicting casualties. They refused. Then came the suggestion to down a Greek aircraft. Again, they refused. Such reports would be alarming at any time. Now they are acute. Tensions between Greece and Turkey are greater than they have been since the 1990s. Ostensibly, the problems come from longstanding competition over resources. Recent exploration has shown the

One thing we know that Putin reads is history. He’s keen on chronicles and biography of great Russians, presumably with an eye to his own reputation. And this may help explain why he’s increasingly trying to control his country’s backstory. In Russia, 1 September is not just the start of the school year, it is Den’ Znanii or ‘knowledge day’. There is a whole ritual, a celebratory welcome to all the new crop of children coming from kindergarten to big school, with sonorous speeches about the value of learning and the promise of a new generation. For the head of state, this is usually a softball opportunity to play the role of father

So is it over for Joe? Gloating Republicans and handwringing Democrats alike suddenly seem convinced that President Trump is headed towards an improbable repeat victory this November, especially after his acceptance speech last night. But there are multifarious reasons to believe that this is a bunch of hooey. For one thing, Biden has been repeatedly counted out only to bounce back. Consider the primary. Conventional wisdom was that Biden was a goner. Too old. Out of it. A dullard. On the eve of the South Carolina primary he was, in short, dismissed as a has-been, though vanity prompts me to note that yours truly, writing on this website, rightly predicted

As Britain’s furlough scheme winds down, Germany’s is set to continue: Merkel’s government has announced that its enormously-expensive policy will stay in place until the end of next year. Hubertus Heil, the country’s finance minister, says furloughing offers ‘the stablest bridge over a deep economic valley’. Many in Britain are clamouring for Rishi Sunak to adopt the same approach. But with a price tag of 30 billion euros (£26 billion) and no guarantee it will prevent a surge in unemployment, is Germany’s strategy really a sensible one? This isn’t the first time Germany is hoping furloughing workers can get it out of a crisis. Kurzarbeitergeld, or ‘short-work money’, is state-regulated