IF THERE were a prize for the world’s unluckiest country, then Haiti would surely be a contender. On August 14th the Caribbean country was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, killing at least 2,000 people; the final death toll could be in the tens of thousands. (A slightly weaker earthquake in 2010 killed between 100,000 and 300,000 Haitians.) Just two days later, rescue efforts were paused when Tropical Storm Grace swept through. But as the poorest economy in the Americas, it is Haiti’s inability to cope with such disasters—rather than the frequency of the disasters themselves—that causes so much grief.

IF THERE were a prize for the world’s unluckiest country, then Haiti would surely be a contender. On August 14th the Caribbean country was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, killing at least 2,000 people; the final death toll could be in the tens of thousands. (A slightly weaker earthquake in 2010 killed between 100,000 and 300,000 Haitians.) Just two days later, rescue efforts were paused when Tropical Storm Grace swept through. But as the poorest economy in the Americas, it is Haiti’s inability to cope with such disasters—rather than the frequency of the disasters themselves—that causes so much grief.

TEN YEARS ago, after a tsunami hit the Fukushima reactor in northern Japan, causing a nuclear disaster, Germany decided to phase out its 12 nuclear power stations. Within months, the first plants were closed. At the end of 2022 the fuel rods for the last three will be pulled out for the last time.

IF THERE were a prize for the world’s unluckiest country, then Haiti would surely be a contender. On August 14th the Caribbean country was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, killing at least 2,000 people; the final death toll could be in the tens of thousands. (A slightly weaker earthquake in 2010 killed between 100,000 and 300,000 Haitians.) Just two days later, rescue efforts were paused when Tropical Storm Grace swept through. But as the poorest economy in the Americas, it is Haiti’s inability to cope with such disasters—rather than the frequency of the disasters themselves—that causes so much grief.

COVID-19 VACCINES in America have gone from being fought over to fought against. Most adults who want the shots already have them, meaning that the unjabbed population is made up largely of anti-vaxxers or the unmotivated. One way to encourage the latter group into getting vaccinated is to offer cash incentives. Several states have done just that, starting with Ohio. On May 12th Mike DeWine, the state governor, announced the launch of the Vax-A-Million programme. Between May 26th and June 23rd individuals who received at least one dose of any covid-19 vaccine could opt into a lottery that would reward five with $1m each and five youths aged 12-17 with full scholarships to an Ohio public university of their choice. The initiative cost $5.6m. According to a new study, it averted around $66m in healthcare costs.

TEN YEARS ago, after a tsunami hit the Fukushima reactor in northern Japan, causing a nuclear disaster, Germany decided to phase out its 12 nuclear power stations. Within months, the first plants were closed. At the end of 2022 the fuel rods for the last three will be pulled out for the last time.

AS INDIA MARKED its 75th year of freedom from British rule on August 15th, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, set his eyes on another sort of independence: liberation from imported energy. This will put pressure on India’s coal industry, which powers the bulk of the country’s grid and has seen prices surge. Mr Modi also promised to leave “no scope for corruption” in the government. A new study by Sam Asher of Johns Hopkins University and Paul Novosad of Dartmouth College suggests that these goals might be at odds with each other. They find that India’s commodities boom could help elect—and enrich—dodgy politicians.

AS INDIA MARKED its 75th year of freedom from British rule on August 15th, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, set his eyes on another sort of independence: liberation from imported energy. This will put pressure on India’s coal industry, which powers the bulk of the country’s grid and has seen prices surge. Mr Modi also promised to leave “no scope for corruption” in the government. A new study by Sam Asher of Johns Hopkins University and Paul Novosad of Dartmouth College suggests that these goals might be at odds with each other. They find that India’s commodities boom could help elect—and enrich—dodgy politicians.

AS INDIA MARKED its 75th year of freedom from British rule on August 15th, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, set his eyes on another sort of independence: liberation from imported energy. This will put pressure on India’s coal industry, which powers the bulk of the country’s grid and has seen prices surge. Mr Modi also promised to leave “no scope for corruption” in the government. A new study by Sam Asher of John Hopkins University and Paul Novosad of Dartmouth College suggests that these goals might be at odds with each other. They find that India’s commodities boom could help elect—and enrich—dodgy politicians.

COVID-19 VACCINES in America have gone from being fought over to fought against. Most adults who want the shots already have them, meaning that the unjabbed population is made up largely of anti-vaxxers or the unmotivated. One way to encourage the latter group into getting vaccinated is to offer cash incentives. Several states have done just that, starting with Ohio. On May 12th Mike DeWine, the state governor, announced the launch of the Vax-A-Million programme. Between May 26th and June 23rd individuals who received at least one dose of any covid-19 vaccine could opt into a lottery that would reward five with $1m each and five youths aged 12-17 with full scholarships to an Ohio public university of their choice. The initiative cost $5.6m. According to a new study, it averted around $66m in healthcare costs.

TEN YEARS ago, after a tsunami hit the Fukushima reactor in northern Japan, causing a nuclear disaster, Germany decided to phase out its 12 nuclear power stations. Within months, the first plants were closed. At the end of 2022 the fuel rods for the last three will be pulled out for the last time.

COVID-19 VACCINES in America have gone from being fought over to fought against. Most adults who want the shots already have them, meaning that the unjabbed population is made up largely of anti-vaxxers or the unmotivated. One way to encourage the latter group into getting vaccinated is to offer cash incentives. Several states have done just that, starting with Ohio. On May 12th Mike DeWine, the state governor, announced the launch of the Vax-A-Million programme. Between May 26th and June 23rd individuals who received at least one dose of any covid-19 vaccine could opt into a lottery that would reward five with $1m each and five youths aged 12-17 with full scholarships to an Ohio public university of their choice. The initiative cost $5.6m. According to a new study, it averted around $66m in healthcare costs.

TEN YEARS ago, after a tsunami hit the Fukushima reactor in northern Japan, causing a nuclear disaster, Germany decided to phase out its 12 nuclear power stations. Within months, the first plants were closed. At the end of 2022 the fuel rods for the last three will be pulled out for the last time.

COVID-19 VACCINES in America have gone from being fought over to fought against. Most adults who want the shots already have them, meaning that the unjabbed population is made up largely of anti-vaxxers or the unmotivated. One way to encourage the latter group into getting vaccinated is to offer cash incentives. Several states have done just that, starting with Ohio. On May 12th Mike DeWine, the state governor, announced the launch of the Vax-A-Million programme. Between May 26th and June 23rd individuals who received at least one dose of any covid-19 vaccine could opt into a lottery that would reward five with $1m each and five youths aged 12-17 with full scholarships to an Ohio public university of their choice. The initiative cost $5.6m. According to a new study, it averted around $66m in healthcare costs.

COVID-19 VACCINES in America have gone from being fought over to fought against. Most adults who want the shots already have them, meaning that the unjabbed population is made up largely of anti-vaxxers or the unmotivated. One way to encourage the latter group into getting vaccinated is to offer cash incentives. Several states have done just that, starting with Ohio. On May 12th Mike DeWine, the state governor, announced the launch of the Vax-A-Million programme. Between May 26th and June 23rd individuals who received at least one dose of any covid-19 vaccine could opt into a lottery that would reward five with $1m each and five youths aged 12-17 with full scholarships to an Ohio public university of their choice. The initiative cost $5.6m. According to a new study, it averted around $66m in healthcare costs.

FOOTBALL’S MOST fruitful partnership has ended in tears. On August 8th a weeping Lionel Messi said he was leaving Barcelona, the club he joined when he was just 13. The Argentine forward has scored a record 474 goals in La Liga, Spain’s top league. His teams have won ten La Liga titles and four Europe-wide Champions League trophies.

This article is also available in English.

NACH FAST 16 Jahren als Deutschlands Kanzlerin wird Angela Merkel nach der Wahl am 26. September zurücktreten. Wer wird die Zügel in Europas größter Wirtschaft übernehmen?

Unser Vorhersagemodell für die Bundestagswahl 2021 kombiniert die neuesten Umfrageergebnisse mit anderen vorausschauenden Indikatoren. Dies erlaubt eine möglichst verlässliche Schätzung, wie viele Stimmen und Sitze die jeweiligen Parteien erlangen werden. Unser Modell misst außerdem die statistische Unsicherheit dieser Ergebnisse.

FOOTBALL’S MOST fruitful partnership has ended in tears. On August 8th a weeping Lionel Messi said he was leaving Barcelona, the club he joined when he was just 13. The Argentine forward has scored a record 474 goals in La Liga, Spain’s top league. His teams have won ten La Liga titles and four Europe-wide Champions League trophies.

Dieser Artikel ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar.

AFTER ALMOST 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel will step down after federal elections on September 26th. But who will take the reins of Europe’s biggest economy?

Our forecasting model for the Bundestagswahl 2021 blends the latest polls with other predictive indicators to come up with the most reliable guess at how many votes and seats each party might win—and measures the uncertainty of the contest.

To do so, we start by aggregating the polls over time. Then our model takes into account, from the history of past elections, how those intentions might change between now and election day. We also calculate the polls’ historical accuracy and explore what could happen if they stray from the mark. In taking into account these extra sources of error, our forecasts thus have a wider margin of error than the polls usually report.

Dieser Artikel ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar.

AFTER ALMOST 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel will step down after federal elections on September 26th. But who will take the reins of Europe’s biggest economy?

Our forecasting model for the Bundestagswahl 2021 blends the latest polls with other predictive indicators to come up with the most reliable guess at how many votes and seats each party might win—and measures the uncertainty of the contest.

To do so, we start by aggregating the polls over time. Then our model takes into account, from the history of past elections, how those intentions might change between now and election day. We also calculate the polls’ historical accuracy and explore what could happen if they stray from the mark. In taking into account these extra sources of error, our forecasts thus have a wider margin of error than the polls usually report.

This article is also available in English.

NACH FAST 16 Jahren als Deutschlands Kanzlerin wird Angela Merkel nach der Wahl am 26. September zurücktreten. Wer wird die Zügel in Europas größter Wirtschaft übernehmen?

Unser Vorhersagemodell für die Bundestagswahl 2021 kombiniert die neuesten Umfrageergebnisse mit anderen vorausschauenden Indikatoren. Dies erlaubt eine möglichst verlässliche Schätzung, wie viele Stimmen und Sitze die jeweiligen Parteien erlangen werden. Unser Modell misst außerdem die statistische Unsicherheit dieser Ergebnisse.

ON THE FIRST weekday of every month, a thread called “Who is hiring” is posted on Hacker News, a news-aggregation website popular with programmers. Hundreds of companies, from one-person operations to trillion-dollar corporations, submit listings. Most of them are based in America, although startup hubs such as Berlin or London are popular as well. According to an analysis by The Economist, only 13% of the jobs posted in the thread in 2011 mentioned remote work. In 2021, more than 75% do. Yet we find that the pandemic accelerated a change that was already taking place: between January 2016 and March 2020 the proportion of jobs mentioning remote working jumped from 20% to 35%.

AMERICAN POLICYMAKERS might be worrying about the pace of consumer-price inflation, but the cost of household goods is not the only expense to have risen faster than usual over the past year. House prices in the country rose by 17% in the year to May, the fastest pace since records began in 1975, according to the latest S&P Case-Shiller index.

Dieser Artikel ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar.

AFTER ALMOST 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel will step down after federal elections on September 26th. But who will take the reins of Europe’s biggest economy?

Our forecasting model for the Bundestagswahl 2021 blends the latest polls with other predictive indicators to come up with the most reliable guess at how many votes and seats each party might win—and measures the uncertainty of the contest.

To do so, we start by aggregating the polls over time. Then our model takes into account, from the history of past elections, how those intentions might change between now and election day. We also calculate the polls’ historical accuracy and explore what could happen if they stray from the mark. In taking into account these extra sources of error, our forecasts thus have a wider margin of error than the polls usually report.