The Economist Asia Edition July 9, 2022

Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, is to resign, it was reported, but hopes to stay in office until the autumn, when a new leader can be installed. It was unclear as The Economist went to press whether he would, in fact, be allowed to hang on. A rebellion within the Conservative government made his position untenable: dozens of ministers resigned, starting with the health secretary and the chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister). Various scandals were unfolding: the deputy chief whip had stood down amid accusations that he had drunkenly groped two men, and Mr Johnson was shown to have known about prior allegations of misbehaviour when he originally appointed him. Mr Johnson’s chaotic management style and repeated failure to tell the truth prompted many who had served under him…

More Americans took flights over the July 4th weekend than at any time since the start of the pandemic. The Transportation Security Administration screened almost 2.5m passengers on July 1st alone, the most since February 11th 2020. But the rebound in travel has left airlines and airports, which cut staff during the pandemic, struggling to cope. Hundreds of flights were cancelled over the weekend, and thousands more delayed. Estimates of the number of people travelling to America in the coming months have risen, now that it has lifted requirements on testing for covid-19. Flying into turbulence Flight cancellations in Europe were more than double those in America between April and June. British Airways has cancelled more flights over the busy summer, bringing its total to almost 30,000. The chief operating…

WITH ITS wholesome dancing and lip-syncing videos, TikTok once billed itself as “the last sunny corner on the internet”. Since launching just five years ago the app has brought a warm glow to its 1bn-plus users, as well as an icy dash of competition to the social-media incumbents of Silicon Valley. With its rise, a part of the tech industry that had seemed closed to competition has been cracked wide open (see Briefing). Yet even as TikTok delights consumers and advertisers, others believe the sunny app has a dark side. ByteDance, its owner, has its headquarters in China, whose government is addicted to surveillance and propaganda—making it a worrying place for a media app to be based. As TikTok’s clout grows and as elections loom in America, there is a…

BORIS JOHNSON’S government has collapsed at last. For months Britain’s prime minister wriggled out of one scandal after another. Now, irretrievably rejected by his own MPs, he has accepted that his premiership is over. He has asked to stay until the autumn, but he should go immediately. Mr Johnson was brought down by his own dishonesty, so some may conclude that a simple change of leadership will be enough to get Britain back on course. If only. Although Mr Johnson’s fingerprints are all over today’s mess, the problems run deeper than one man. Unless the ruling Conservative Party musters the fortitude to face that fact, Britain’s many social and economic difficulties will only worsen. Right up until the end Mr Johnson clung desperately to power, arguing that he had a…

IF A WOMAN in Texas has an abortion she is breaking the law, even if her pregnancy is the result of a rape. The same woman may, however, buy an AR15 rifle capable of firing 45 rounds a minute, and she may carry a pistol on her hip when picking her toddler up from pre-school. In these, and in a few other ways, America is an outlier compared with other rich democracies. You might assume that this simply reflects the preferences of voters. You would be wrong: it is the result of a political failure. American exceptionalism once seemed to be the cause of all sorts of transatlantic differences, for good and ill. America’s greater religiosity explained the intensity of the culture wars over gay marriage and abortion. Greater individualism…

IF HISTORY IS “a race between education and catastrophe”, as H.G. Wells once put it, education seemed until recently to be winning. In 1950 only about half of adults globally had any schooling; now at least 85% do. Between 2000 and 2018, the proportion of school-age children who were not enrolled in classes fell from 26% to 17%. But the rapid rise in attendance masked an ugly truth: many pupils were spending years behind desks but learning almost nothing. In 2019 the World Bank started keeping count of the number of children who still cannot read by the time they finish primary school. It found that less than half of ten-year-olds in developing countries (home to 90% of the world’s children) could read and understand a simple story. Then the…