The Economist Continental Europe Edition May 29, 2021

The number of officially recorded cases in India continued to fall, on one day dropping below 200,000 for the first time in weeks. Germany banned most visitors from Britain because of the spreading Indian variant of covid-19 in that country. French officials said people entering from Britain would have to quarantine, but stopped short of an outright ban. Research in Britain, meanwhile, found that two doses of either the Astra­Zeneca or Pfizer vaccine provide good protection against the Indian variant. An outbreak of the variant in Melbourne led to a new lockdown in the Australian state of Victoria, a disappointment for the city, which last year had one of the world’s longest lockdowns. Vaccination rates in Australia remain very low. Argentina entered a nine-day lockdown. Cases are surging amid a slow take-up of…

Politics Belarus hijacked a Ryanair plane flying from one EU country (Greece) to another (Lithuania) with more than 100 people on board. The plane was in Belarusian airspace. Citing a “bomb threat”, the authorities sent a fighter jet to make it land in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. They arrested two passengers: Roman Protasevich, an exiled journalist, and his girlfriend. Mr Protasevich had rallied opposition to Alexander Lukashenko, the despot who stole Belarus’s presidential election last year. No bomb was found. Russia applauded Mr Lukashenko’s boldness; the EU mulled sanctions on his isolated regime. Switzerland said it was walking away from years of negotiations on a new treaty with the EU aimed at harmonising dozens of messy individual deals on trade, investment and the movement of people. Police in India visited…

Politics Belarus hijacked a Ryanair plane flying from one EU country (Greece) to another (Lithuania) with more than 100 people on board. The plane was in Belarusian airspace. Citing a “bomb threat”, the authorities sent a fighter jet to make it land in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. They arrested two passengers: Roman Protasevich, an exiled journalist, and his girlfriend. Mr Protasevich had rallied opposition to Alexander Lukashenko, the despot who stole Belarus’s presidential election last year. No bomb was found. Russia applauded Mr Lukashenko’s boldness; the EU mulled sanctions on his isolated regime. Switzerland said it was walking away from years of negotiations on a new treaty with the EU aimed at harmonising dozens of messy individual deals on trade, investment and the movement of people. Police in India visited Twitter’s offices after…

The number of officially recorded cases in India continued to fall, on one day dropping below 200,000 for the first time in weeks. Germany banned most visitors from Britain because of the spreading Indian variant of covid-19 in that country. French officials said people entering from Britain would have to quarantine, but stopped short of an outright ban. Research in Britain, meanwhile, found that two doses of either the Astra­Zeneca or Pfizer vaccine provide good protection against the Indian variant. An outbreak of the variant in Melbourne led to a new lockdown in the Australian state of Victoria, a disappointment for the city, which last year had one of the world’s longest lockdowns. Vaccination rates in Australia remain very low. Argentina entered a nine-day lockdown. Cases are surging amid a…

HAVE MORE time and effort ever been devoted to peace to so little effect? America began overseeing talks between the Israelis and Palestinians three decades ago. But the Holy Land remains contested by two peoples who cannot bring themselves to live together. The fighting in May that left 242 Palestinians and ten Israelis dead accomplished nothing except to clear the field for the next round of fighting. The peace process set up in the Oslo accords in 1993 aims to create two states that agree to disagree—using land swaps, security guarantees, a deal to share Jerusalem and a limited “right of return” for Palestinians. Israel’s prize was to be a thriving democracy and a sanctuary for Jews; for Palestinians it was the promise of self-rule. At times, peace has been tantalisingly…

AS THE RICH world reopens, the contours of the post-pandemic economy are becoming clear. The latest trend is a global surge in capital spending (see Finance section). Forecasters reckon that overall real investment worldwide will soon be a fifth higher than it was before the pandemic. America’s business investment is rising at an annual rate of 15%. By 2022 companies in the S & P 500 are forecast to be spending over a tenth more on factories, technology, R & D and the like. Barely a day goes by without a large firm boasting about how much it plans to splurge. AT&T says it will throw $24bn a year at its networks. Sony is piling $18bn into an expansion push. Semiconductor firms are engaged in one of the biggest capitalspending…