The Economist Continental Europe Edition March 7, 2020

Politics Joe Biden’s campaign bounced back after he won most of the 14 states that voted on Super Tuesday. Barack Obama’s vice-president racked up big victories in southern states, where black voters are a large part of the Democratic electorate. Mr Biden earlier scored a huge win in the South Carolina primary. The race for the party’s presidential nomination is now between him and Bernie Sanders, who won California, the biggest prize on Super Tuesday. Despite a costly media blitz, Mike Bloomberg did poorly and ended his campaign; he endorsed Mr Biden. Elizabeth Warren came in a miserable third in her home state of Massachusetts. In a boost to the power of the presidency, a federal appeals court sided with the White House when it ruled that Congress had no powers to…

Politics Joe Biden’s campaign bounced back after he won most of the 14 states that voted on Super Tuesday. Barack Obama’s vice-president racked up big victories in southern states, where black voters are a large part of the Democratic electorate. Mr Biden earlier scored a huge win in the South Carolina primary. The race for the party’s presidential nomination is now between him and Bernie Sanders, who won California, the biggest prize on Super Tuesday. Despite a costly media blitz, Mike Bloomberg did poorly and ended his campaign; he endorsed Mr Biden. Elizabeth Warren came in a miserable third in her home state of Massachusetts. In a boost to the power of the presidency, a federal appeals court sided with the White House when it ruled that Congress had no…

IT IS NOT a fair fight, but it is a fight that many countries will face all the same. Left to itself, the covid-19 pandemic doubles every five to six days. When you get your next issue of The Economist the outbreak could in theory have infected twice as many people as today. Governments can slow that ferocious pace, but bureaucratic time is not the same as virus time. And at the moment governments across the world are being left flat-footed. The disease is in 85 countries and territories, up from 50 a week earlier. Over 95,000 cases and 3,200 deaths have been recorded. Yet our analysis, based on patterns of travel to and from China, suggests that many countries which have spotted tens of cases have hundreds more circulating undetected…

ELECTIONS HAVE a knack of making pundits look foolish. Ever since the Brexit referendum, electoral upsets around the world have involved underdogs and insurgents pulling off unexpected victories. The Democratic Party seems to be bucking that trend. On March 3rd Super Tuesday produced an upset of a different sort, one that makes Joseph Robinette Biden Jr—a moderate 77-year-old former vice-president making his third bid for the top job—the favourite to win the party’s nomination, and hence to take on President Donald Trump in November. Democrats seem to have learned the lesson in game theory provided by the Republican Party in 2016. When the primary field is divided between a large number of similar candidates bent on attacking one another, it is possible for a factional candidate who attracts 30% of the…

FEW PLACES on Earth are more miserable than Idlib province, the last big pocket of rebel-held territory in war-torn Syria. It is home to some 3m people, roughly half of whom are there only because they have fled fighting elsewhere. Along with the poor, huddled masses came jihadists, who now largely control the territory. Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, wants it back, even if that means reducing it to rubble. His months-long bombing campaign has destroyed schools, houses and hospitals, and pushed a million people towards Turkey’s sealed border. Many are trapped there, cold, hungry and exposed. The world is at last waking up to this humanitarian crisis—and to the fact that Turkey is the only country trying to stave it off. Fearing another flood of migrants, its president, Recep Tay-yip Erdogan,…

IT IS NOT a fair fight, but it is a fight that many countries will face all the same. Left to itself, the covid-19 pandemic doubles every five to six days. When you get your next issue of The Economist the outbreak could in theory have infected twice as many people as today. Governments can slow that ferocious pace, but bureaucratic time is not the same as virus time. And at the moment governments across the world are being left flat-footed. The disease is in 85 countries and territories, up from 50 a week earlier. Over 95,000 cases and 3,200 deaths have been recorded. Yet our analysis, based on patterns of travel to and from China, suggests that many countries which have spotted tens of cases have hundreds more circulating…