Rebel with a new cause: meeting Syria’s presi...

After decades of overpopulation worries, the country now has the opposite concern. We examine India’s unusual demographic turn, and why it is a wider warning to the world. Vegan substitutes have broadly improved in recent years—so why is there no good vegan cheese? And rememberin ...  Show more

Nigel Farage, leader of the populist-right Reform UK party, wants Britons to be enraged by a killing in the street. We ask why his tone has changed from “colour-blind” to race-baiting. NATO must now take seriously the idea that America is pulling back; we ask how it is adjusting. ...  Show more

Yesterday’s arrest of a notorious gang leader is a win for Daniel Noboa. He assures our journalists he can beat back rampant transnational gangs without trampling democracy. The torrent of big geopolitical news has, perhaps surprisingly, not much moved the markets; we ask why. An ...  Show more

Sheikh Hasina, who led the country for 20 of the past 28 years with an increasingly authoritarian grip, was ultimately undone by student protests that would not be quelled. China may be world-leading in autonomous taxis—but our ride in one is not without complications (9:00). And ...  Show more

We meet the opposition leader who is likely to be the next president. Cleaning up the domestic mess after an alleged coup would seem easy compared with his tasks on the international stage. Our correspondent reports on renewed violence in Colombia; again, or still, it is about co ...  Show more

Coffers running low and an increasingly absent principal member: the United Nations has never looked so precarious. We discuss its future amid uncertain geopolitics. The generative-AI explosion has mostly been driven by so-called large language models—but small ones look ever mor ...  Show more