The Economist Latin America

More than 100 people were killed by a suicide-bomb at a mosque in Peshawar, a city in north-west Pakistan. Nearly all the dead were members of the security forces. The mosque was located in a heavily fortified area. The Pakistan Taliban was blamed for the atrocity, though it denied involvement. Last November the militants called off a peace process with the government and said they would carry out attacks across the country. Critics of the process say it allowed the Taliban to regroup. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s government held another round of talks with the IMF over a possible bail-out. Ahead of the negotiations the government raised fuel prices and loosened foreign-exchange controls, which sent the rupee to a new low. Foreign reserves are dwindling, causing a backlog of imports at ports as buyers…

Meta’s quarterly earnings delighted investors, for a change, as it set out a plan to reduce costs in a “year of efficiency” and announced a $40bn share buy-back. Revenue fell in the last three months of 2022, year on year, but is expected to rise in this quarter. Still, Reality Labs, the division tasked with creating the metaverse, ran up another loss, of $4.3bn, taking its total loss for the year to $13.7bn. Sharing the driving seat After months of sometimes troublesome negotiations, Nissan and Renault announced a restructuring of their two-decade-old alliance, which has been under strain since the fall from grace in 2018 of Carlos Ghosn, who had run both carmakers. The main feature of the agreement is a reduction in Renault’s stake in Nissan to 15% from 43%, with…

GET BEHIND the wheel of an electric vehicle made in Detroit and drive south. The outline of a city that was once a byword for industrial decline fades in the rear-view mirror. Head into Ohio, where the battery under your feet was made. The semiconductors that regulate its charging speed were made there too, in a vast new factory that counts the Pentagon among its biggest customers. Recharge with electricity transmitted from one of West Virginia’s new nuclear plants, then start the long journey into the heartlands. After the endless wind farms of Kansas, you drive through Oklahoma’s vast solar fields, then loop back to the gulf coast. The trip ends by the water, the bright sun glinting off a spanking-new green-hydrogen plant. This is America in 2033, if the Biden…

ON THE SURFACE it was a huge mismatch—David versus an army of Goliaths. Yet in a matter of days a report by Hindenburg Research, a fledgling short-selling firm, resulted in a fall of over $50bn in the wealth of Gautam Adani, hitherto one of the world’s richest men and a close associate of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. Along the way, a $2.5bn share offering by Adani Enterprises, flagship of the Adani Group’s listed companies, was derailed. Hindenburg alleged that Adani is a giant con. Adani countered that the charges are baseless and, moreover, count as an attack on India itself. Mr Adani is a big target. His empire has expanded rapidly in recent years, and now includes everything from ports to power plants. Its share offer initially closed on January…

CHANGING THE helmsman halfway through a tricky manoeuvre at sea is a risky prospect. Yet that is what is happening in Japan, where the government will soon propose a successor to Kuroda Haruhiko as the head of the Bank of Japan, just as the central bank prepares to tighten monetary policy for the first time since 2007. In December, amid rising inflation and speculative pressure, the bank raised its cap on ten-year government-bond yields, from 0.25% to 0.5%. The next governor is expected to raise the cap further, or even to abandon the policy, which is known as yield-curve control. Unfortunately, the regime change is not off to a good start. Lifting the cap has only increased bets against it. Since December the Bank of Japan has had to defend the…

IN DECEMBER THE West took aim at Russian oil revenues, unleashing the biggest package of energy sanctions ever imposed on a single country. Europe, which had been a big buyer of Russian seaborne crude, banned imports of the stuff. It also barred its long-dominant shippers, lenders and insurers from facilitating the sale of Russian crude to other buyers—unless the oil was sold below a “price cap” of $60 a barrel set by the West. Two months in, plenty of people seem to think that the cap is a big success. A second round of European sanctions, on diesel and other refined products, is due to come into force on February 5th. Unfortunately, our reporting suggests that the scheme is not biting. The December ban-and-cap policy has not succeeded in curbing sales of…