TEARING DOWN crosses from church spires may not sound the best way to win a promotion. But in Xi Jinping’s China, it might do the trick. In 2014 Xia Baolong, the Communist Party chief in Zhejiang, a coastal province, oversaw a campaign to remove more than 1,500 crosses from places of worship in the province. Bibles were confiscated; pastors were locked up. It certainly did Mr Xia’s career no harm. A long-time ally of the president, he was promoted first to a plum job in Beijing and then, in February, to a new assignment as head of the office overseeing Hong Kong and Macau affairs.

As for China’s Christians, their numbers continue to grow. The government reckons that about 200m of China’s 1.4bn people are religious. Although most practice traditional Chinese religions such as Taoism, and longer-standing foreign imports such as Buddhism, Protestant Christianity is probably the fastest-growing faith, with at least 38m adherents today (about 3% of the population), up from 22m...

TEARING DOWN crosses from church spires may not sound the best way to win a promotion. But in Xi Jinping’s China, it might do the trick. In 2014 Xia Baolong, the Communist Party chief in Zhejiang, a coastal province, oversaw a campaign to remove more than 1,500 crosses from places of worship in the province. Bibles were confiscated; pastors were locked up. It certainly did Mr Xia’s career no harm. A long-time ally of the president, he was promoted first to a plum job in Beijing and then, in February, to a new assignment as head of the office overseeing Hong Kong and Macau affairs.

As for China’s Christians, their numbers continue to grow. The government reckons that about 200m of China’s 1.4bn people are religious. Although most practice traditional Chinese religions such as Taoism, and longer-standing foreign imports such as Buddhism, Protestant Christianity is probably the fastest-growing faith, with at least 38m adherents today (about 3% of the population), up from 22m...

EVERY WINTER, from May to October, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are asked how they feel. More precisely, they are asked by their governments in weekly surveys if they have a cough or a fever. Although 2020 has been a difficult year in many ways for Aussies and Kiwis, it has not necessarily been bad for their physical health. This winter only around 0.4% of people in the two countries said they were suffering from flu-like symptoms, down by four-fifths compared with last year. Other countries in the southern hemisphere have reported similar slowdowns in the spread of influenza.

The cause for this steep decline in infections is clear. Governments all around the world have enacted costly lockdowns to fight the novel coronavirus. In doing so, not only have countries in the southern hemisphere slowed the spread of covid-19, but they also appear inadvertently to have stopped the proliferation of another deadly disease: the flu.

Since 1952 the World...

TEARING DOWN crosses from church spires may not sound the best way to win a promotion. But in Xi Jinping’s China, it might do the trick. In 2014 Xia Baolong, the Communist Party chief in Zhejiang, a coastal province, oversaw a campaign to remove more than 1,500 crosses from places of worship in the province. Bibles were confiscated; pastors were locked up. It certainly did Mr Xia’s career no harm. A long-time ally of the president, he was promoted first to a plum job in Beijing and then, in February, to a new assignment as head of the office overseeing Hong Kong and Macau affairs.

As for China’s Christians, their numbers continue to grow. The government reckons that about 200m of China’s 1.4bn people are religious. Although most practice traditional Chinese religions such as Taoism, and longer-standing foreign imports such as Buddhism, Protestant Christianity is probably the fastest-growing faith, with at least 38m adherents today (about 3% of the population), up from 22m...

EVERY WINTER, from May to October, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are asked how they feel. More precisely, they are asked by their governments in weekly surveys if they have a cough or a fever. Although 2020 has been a difficult year in many ways for Aussies and Kiwis, it has not necessarily been bad for their physical health. This winter only around 0.4% of people in the two countries said they were suffering from flu-like symptoms, down by four-fifths compared with last year. Other countries in the southern hemisphere have reported similar slowdowns in the spread of influenza.

The cause for this steep decline in infections is clear. Governments all around the world have enacted costly lockdowns to fight the novel coronavirus. In doing so, not only have countries in the southern hemisphere slowed the spread of covid-19, but they also appear inadvertently to have stopped the proliferation of another deadly disease: the flu.

Since 1952 the World...

WHEN CAIXABANK and Bankia, its state-owned peer, announced on September 3rd that they were exploring a merger to create Spain’s biggest domestic lender, politicians, regulators and analysts offered unusually unanimous applause. If the deal goes through, it will boost consolidation within the Spanish market, hitherto highly fragmented beneath two international giants, Banco Santander and BBVA. It may also inspire similar deals elsewhere in the European Union.

If European banks want to catch up with American and Chinese ones, they must push for consolidation. Outside the EU, that logic might also explain why the two giants of Swiss banking, Credit Suisse and UBS, are reportedly discussing a merger. The idea has been explored in the past but abandoned because of antitrust worries.

WHEN CAIXABANK and Bankia, its state-owned peer, announced on September 3rd that they were exploring a merger to create Spain’s biggest domestic lender, politicians, regulators and analysts offered unusually unanimous applause. If the deal goes through, it will boost consolidation within the Spanish market, hitherto highly fragmented beneath two international giants, Banco Santander and BBVA. It may also inspire similar deals elsewhere in the European Union.

If European banks want to catch up with American and Chinese ones, they must push for consolidation. Outside the EU, that logic might also explain why the two giants of Swiss banking, Credit Suisse and UBS, are reportedly discussing a merger. The idea has been explored in the past but abandoned because of antitrust worries.

WHEN CAIXABANK and Bankia, its state-owned peer, announced on September 3rd that they were exploring a merger to create Spain’s biggest domestic lender, politicians, regulators and analysts offered unusually unanimous applause. If the deal goes through, it will boost consolidation within the Spanish market, hitherto highly fragmented beneath two international giants, Banco Santander and BBVA. It may also inspire similar deals elsewhere in the European Union.

If European banks want to catch up with American and Chinese ones, they must push for consolidation. Outside the EU, that logic might also explain why the two giants of Swiss banking, Credit Suisse and UBS, are reportedly discussing a merger. The idea has been explored in the past but abandoned because of antitrust worries.

EVERY WINTER, from May to October, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are asked how they feel. More precisely, they are asked by their governments in weekly surveys if they have a cough or a fever. Although 2020 has been a difficult year in many ways for Aussies and Kiwis, it has not necessarily been bad for their physical health. This winter only around 0.4% of people in the two countries said they were suffering from flu-like symptoms, down by four-fifths compared with last year. Other countries in the southern hemisphere have reported similar slowdowns in the spread of influenza.

The cause for this steep decline in infections is clear. Governments all around the world have enacted costly lockdowns to fight the novel coronavirus. In doing so, not only have countries in the southern hemisphere slowed the spread of covid-19, but they also appear inadvertently to have stopped the proliferation of another deadly disease: the flu.

Since 1952 the World...

WHEN CAIXABANK and Bankia, its state-owned peer, announced on September 3rd that they were exploring a merger to create Spain’s biggest domestic lender, politicians, regulators and analysts offered unusually unanimous applause. If the deal goes through, it will boost consolidation within the Spanish market, hitherto highly fragmented beneath two international giants, Banco Santander and BBVA. It may also inspire similar deals elsewhere in the European Union.

If European banks want to catch up with American and Chinese ones, they must push for consolidation. Outside the EU, that logic might also explain why the two giants of Swiss banking, Credit Suisse and UBS, are reportedly discussing a merger. The idea has been explored in the past but abandoned because of antitrust worries.

EVERY WINTER, from May to October, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are asked how they feel. More precisely, they are asked by their governments in weekly surveys if they have a cough or a fever. Although 2020 has been a difficult year in many ways for Aussies and Kiwis, it has not necessarily been bad for their physical health. This winter only around 0.4% of people in the two countries said they were suffering from flu-like symptoms, down by four-fifths compared with last year. Other countries in the southern hemisphere have reported similar slowdowns in the spread of influenza.

The cause for this steep decline in infections is clear. Governments all around the world have enacted costly lockdowns to fight the novel coronavirus. In doing so, not only have countries in the southern hemisphere slowed the spread of covid-19, but they also appear inadvertently to have stopped the proliferation of another deadly disease: the flu.

Since 1952 the World...

EVERY WINTER, from May to October, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are asked how they feel. More precisely, they are asked by their governments in weekly surveys if they have a cough or a fever. Although 2020 has been a difficult year in many ways for Aussies and Kiwis, it has not necessarily been bad for their physical health. This winter only around 0.4% of people in the two countries said they were suffering from flu-like symptoms, down by four-fifths compared with last year. Other countries in the southern hemisphere have reported similar slowdowns in the spread of influenza.

The cause for this steep decline in infections is clear. Governments all around the world have enacted costly lockdowns to fight the novel coronavirus. In doing so, not only have countries in the southern hemisphere slowed the spread of covid-19, but they also appear inadvertently to have stopped the proliferation of another deadly disease: the flu.

Since 1952 the World...

EVERY WINTER, from May to October, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are asked how they feel. More precisely, they are asked by their governments in weekly surveys if they have a cough or a fever. Although 2020 has been a difficult year in many ways for Aussies and Kiwis, it has not necessarily been bad for their physical health. This winter only around 0.4% of people in the two countries said they were suffering from flu-like symptoms, down by four-fifths compared with last year. Other countries in the southern hemisphere have reported similar slowdowns in the spread of influenza.

The cause for this steep decline in infections is clear. Governments all around the world have enacted costly lockdowns to fight the novel coronavirus. In doing so, not only have countries in the southern hemisphere slowed the spread of covid-19, but they also appear inadvertently to have stopped the proliferation of another deadly disease: the flu.

Since 1952 the World...

IS FACEBOOK A right-wing echo chamber? No, says Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s 36-year-old founder. In an interview this week, Mr Zuckerberg insisted that this characterisation is “just wrong”. “That’s not actually how our systems work,” he said. But even if the social-media platform is not designed to amplify extreme views, it may still have that effect. According to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks how web content is shared on social media, the two most popular American media outlets on the site last month—as measured by shares, views, comments and other forms of “engagement”—were Fox News and Breitbart, two right-wing news sites.

An analysis by The Economist suggests that, whatever Facebook’s intentions, the social-networking site has more of a political slant than Mr Zuckerberg lets on. Using CrowdTangle, we compiled a list of the media outlets that received the most Facebook engagement in August. We then examined the top 35 for which data on...

IS FACEBOOK A right-wing echo chamber? No, says Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s 36-year-old founder. In an interview this week, Mr Zuckerberg insisted that this characterisation is “just wrong”. “That’s not actually how our systems work,” he said. But even if the social-media platform is not designed to amplify extreme views, it may still have that effect. According to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks how web content is shared on social media, the two most popular American media outlets on the site last month—as measured by shares, views, comments and other forms of “engagement”—were Fox News and Breitbart, two right-wing news sites.

An analysis by The Economist suggests that, whatever Facebook’s intentions, the social-networking site has more of a political slant than Mr Zuckerberg lets on. Using CrowdTangle, we compiled a list of the media outlets that received the most Facebook engagement in August. We then examined the top 35 for which data on...

IS FACEBOOK A right-wing echo chamber? No, says Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s 36-year-old founder. In an interview this week, Mr Zuckerberg insisted that this characterisation is “just wrong”. “That’s not actually how our systems work,” he said. But even if the social-media platform is not designed to amplify extreme views, it may still have that effect. According to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks how web content is shared on social media, the two most popular American media outlets on the site last month—as measured by shares, views, comments and other forms of “engagement”—were Fox News and Breitbart, two right-wing news sites.

An analysis by The Economist suggests that, whatever Facebook’s intentions, the social-networking site has more of a political slant than Mr Zuckerberg lets on. Using CrowdTangle, we compiled a list of the media outlets that received the most Facebook engagement in August. We then examined the top 35 for which data on...

IS FACEBOOK A right-wing echo chamber? No, says Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s 36-year-old founder. In an interview this week, Mr Zuckerberg insisted that this characterisation is “just wrong”. “That’s not actually how our systems work,” he said. But even if the social-media platform is not designed to amplify extreme views, it may still have that effect. According to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks how web content is shared on social media, the two most popular American media outlets on the site last month—as measured by shares, views, comments and other forms of “engagement”—were Fox News and Breitbart, two right-wing news sites.

An analysis by The Economist suggests that, whatever Facebook’s intentions, the social-networking site has more of a political slant than Mr Zuckerberg lets on. Using CrowdTangle, we compiled a list of the media outlets that received the most Facebook engagement in August. We then examined the top 35 for which data on...

IS FACEBOOK A right-wing echo chamber? No, says Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s 36-year-old founder. In an interview this week, Mr Zuckerberg insisted that this characterisation is “just wrong”. “That’s not actually how our systems work,” he said. But even if the social-media platform is not designed to amplify extreme views, it may still have that effect. According to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks how web content is shared on social media, the two most popular American media outlets on the site last month—as measured by shares, views, comments and other forms of “engagement”—were Fox News and Breitbart, two right-wing news sites.

An analysis by The Economist suggests that, whatever Facebook’s intentions, the social-networking site has more of a political slant than Mr Zuckerberg lets on. Using CrowdTangle, we compiled a list of the media outlets that received the most Facebook engagement in August. We then examined the top 35 for which data on...

AT THE beginning of spring much of Europe shut down to slow the spread of covid-19, which has infected nearly 3m people and taken the lives of about 200,000 in the continent’s 54 countries and territories, from the Atlantic to the Urals. The first wave of infections appears largely to have abated. Countries are returning to some semblance of normality—albeit with social-distancing measures in place. Now that governments are loosening restrictions on their citizens, the fear is that the virus could return.

AMERICANS HAVE rarely felt gloomier about the state of race relations. A new poll from Gallup shows that perceptions of black-white relations are at their gloomiest in 20 years. Conducted between June 8th and July 24th, it found that just 44% of Americans say relations between the two groups are very or somewhat good, compared with 55% who say they are very or somewhat bad. That Americans’ views are particularly pessimistic now—an election year in which the two big parties have taken opposing stances to racial unrest—is not surprising. In fact, they are part of a longer trend.

Not long ago, conditions were more harmonious. In 2013, more than two-thirds of respondents described relations between black and white Americans as very or somewhat good. Attitudes quickly shifted as police killings of black Americans attracted national attention. After the killings of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown in 2014, each of which offered their own Black Lives Matter rallying cries—“I can’t...

AMERICANS HAVE rarely felt gloomier about the state of race relations. A new poll from Gallup shows that perceptions of black-white relations are at their gloomiest in 20 years. Conducted between June 8th and July 24th, it found that just 44% of Americans say relations between the two groups are very or somewhat good, compared with 55% who say they are very or somewhat bad. That Americans’ views are particularly pessimistic now—an election year in which the two big parties have taken opposing stances to racial unrest—is not surprising. In fact, they are part of a longer trend.

Not long ago, conditions were more harmonious. In 2013, more than two-thirds of respondents described relations between black and white Americans as very or somewhat good. Attitudes quickly shifted as police killings of black Americans attracted national attention. After the killings of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown in 2014, each of which offered their own Black Lives Matter rallying cries—“I can’t...

AMERICANS HAVE rarely felt gloomier about the state of race relations. A new poll from Gallup shows that perceptions of black-white relations are at their gloomiest in 20 years. Conducted between June 8th and July 24th, it found that just 44% of Americans say relations between the two groups are very or somewhat good, compared with 55% who say they are very or somewhat bad. That Americans’ views are particularly pessimistic now—an election year in which the two big parties have taken opposing stances to racial unrest—is not surprising. In fact, they are part of a longer trend.

Not long ago, conditions were more harmonious. In 2013, more than two-thirds of respondents described relations between black and white Americans as very or somewhat good. Attitudes quickly shifted as police killings of black Americans attracted national attention. After the killings of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown in 2014, each of which offered their own Black Lives Matter rallying cries—“I can’t...

WILDFIRES IN THE Arctic have produced more carbon emissions this year than in any year on record, according to scientists at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), an EU agency. So far in 2020, millions of acres inside the Arctic Circle have gone up in flames, releasing 244m tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, compared with 182m tonnes in the whole of last year. (Before 2019, the record was 110m tonnes in 2004.) Figures from the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists, suggest that this year’s fires have generated more carbon emissions than, say, Malaysia or Spain does burning fossil fuels in an entire year.

Experts worry the fires may be evidence of a vicious circle of climate change. Arctic wildfires—especially those burning in the carbon-rich zone between tundra and boreal forest—emit a wide range of pollutants including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and solid aerosol particles. As they consume organic...