The Intelligence: F is for falling standards

Big oil firms keep one part of their business hush-hush: trading. Amid an almighty oil shock, the majors’ trading arms are raking it in. But competition is mounting. We look at the Trump administration’s messy attempts to regulate frontier AI models, and how that may cost America ...  Show more

Government help was thin on the ground just after the country’s worst quakes in a century. The America-backed regime is thus on literal and figurative shaky ground. A food-delivery robot trial in England represents the future of the service. And why Harlan Coben’s proliferating t ...  Show more

America is producing more high-school graduates—but on average, they know less. We ask how a push for equity can in reality seed a <a href="https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/03/10/new-numbers-show-falling-standards-in-american-high-schools?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_medi ...

America’s central bank left rates untouched, to widespread market delight. Why is this economic cycle confounding expectations so much, and how to bring it to a <a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/03/20/why-america-cant-escape-inflation-worries?utm_ca ...

Labour markets are changing in all kinds of ways, thanks to ageing societies, hot-running economies and technological boosts. It all adds up to a <a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/28/welcome-to-a-golden-age-for-workers?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_mediu ...

India is not the first country to leapfrog from poverty-induced undernourishment to also having an obesity crisis—but a <a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/03/07/indian-food-is-great-perhaps-too-great?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_medium=audio.podcast.np&utm_source=theintelli ...