Keeper of the gate
The weekend despatch: In Seoul, a bet against borrowing intelligence from Silicon Valley. Off East Africa, a new volcano’s time capsule from the origin of the Earth. + What is sacred steel?
Truce after truce
Briefing: War spreads to the Red Sea. Sanctions hit the Russian stock market. + Has politics really killed the humanities in America?
Humboldt’s gift
Feature: Has politics really killed the humanities in America? Chad Wellmon on a red herring in public debate about the universities—and what you see when you start following the money.
‘No more elections here’
Briefing: In Nicaragua, why an 80-year-old president is clearing the way to hand power to his wife. In Iran, the truce the regime is secretly pushing for—and still swears it doesn’t need. + Why hasn’t Ukraine collapsed into autocracy?
To the victor …
The weekend despatch: In Budapest, the machinery of the old order, handed to the people who ran against it. A 25-kilometer crater in the Quebec bush that no one noticed for 390 million years. + How rare are creative multi-hyphenates in Hollywood?
All in favor
Briefing: An election the U.S.-installed government in Caracas has agreed to hold—and would rather not. Russia’s grain and Ukraine’s ports, each in the other’s sights. + Why have buildings gotten so ugly?
The language of beauty
Feature: Why have buildings gotten so ugly? Samuel Hughes on a status game that’s been playing out in contemporary architecture—and how elite taste may be starting to turn.
‘So-called international law’
Briefing: A campaign to take apart the world’s war-crimes court. An Ebola outbreak with four in five new cases unlinked to any known patient. + More and more countries are banning kids from social media. Will it work?
Oil, oil, everywhere
The weekend despatch: A petrostate lines up for petrol. The discovery in Egypt of a town that buried its dead with gold on their tongues. + Is time slowing down, or are jazz tracks getting longer?
Here we go again
Briefing: Ninety American targets over one night, and an unsettled question of who collects at the Strait of Hormuz. A president-elect’s call for Colombian soldiers to disobey the man still in office. + Why is the U.S. government going so easy on white-collar crime?
