The Economist Continental Europe Edition June 26, 2021

Indonesia recorded its highest number of daily cases—over 14,500—as infections surged following a religious holiday and the spread of the Delta variant. Hospital beds in Jakarta are 80% full. Nationally, less than 10% of people over the age of 12 have received a single vaccine dose. Japan said it would limit the number of spectators at Olympic events to 10,000, but insisted the games would start on July 23rd. A court in Brussels chastised AstraZeneca for breaching its contract with the EU on vaccines, but did not support the EU’s demand that the drug company deliver 120m doses by the end of June. Calls were made for the British government to publish its risk assessment of the recent g7 summit it hosted in Cornwall, after a surge of infections were recorded around the…

Politics Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric and former chief of the judiciary, won Iran’s presidential election with 62% of the vote. His main rivals had all been barred from running. Turnout was less than 49%, a record low, as many liberal and moderate Iranians stayed at home. Mr Raisi promised to continue working with America and other world powers to resuscitate the nuclear deal signed in 2015, but said he would not meet Joe Biden. And he insisted that Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its support for foreign militias were not negotiable. Kenneth Kaunda, the founding president of Zambia, died at the age of 97. He is remembered as a giant of Africa’s liberation from colonial rule and for stepping down when he lost an election in 1991. He also locked up…

ON JULY 1ST China’s Communist Party will celebrate its 100th birthday. It has always called itself “great, glorious and correct”. And as it starts its second century, the party has good cause to brag. Not only has it survived far longer than its many critics predicted; it also appears to be on the up. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, many pundits thought that the other great communist power would be next. To see how wrong they were, consider that President Joe Biden, at a summit on June 13th, felt the need to declare not only that America was at odds with China, but also that much of the world doubted “whether or not democracies can compete”. One party has ruled China for 72 years, without a mandate from voters.…

Politics Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric and former chief of the judiciary, won Iran’s presidential election with 62% of the vote. His main rivals had all been barred from running. Turnout was less than 49%, a record low, as many liberal and moderate Iranians stayed at home. Mr Raisi promised to continue working with America and other world powers to resuscitate the nuclear deal signed in 2015, but said he would not meet Joe Biden. And he insisted that Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its support for foreign militias were not negotiable. Kenneth Kaunda, the founding president of Zambia, died at the age of 97. He is remembered as a giant of Africa’s liberation from colonial rule and for stepping down when he lost an election in 1991. He also…

DURING MOST of the pandemic, exceptional uncertainty about the future of America’s economy has been met with exceptional certainty that monetary policy would stay very loose. No longer. At the Federal Reserve’s meeting in June policymakers signalled that they may raise interest rates in 2023, sooner than they previously thought, and upgraded their inflation forecasts for this year. Investors have spent a week struggling to digest the news. Long-term bond yields, which move inversely to prices, first rose and then fell beneath their initial level. Shares fell steeply and then recovered. Emerging-market currencies, which suffer when American monetary policy tightens, have fallen against the dollar. The Fed’s future interest-rate decisions can suddenly be counted among the many unknowns hanging over the economy as it recovers from the pandemic. Already on the…

Indonesia recorded its highest number of daily cases—over 14,500—as infections surged following a religious holiday and the spread of the Delta variant. Hospital beds in Jakarta are 80% full. Nationally, less than 10% of people over the age of 12 have received a single vaccine dose. Japan said it would limit the number of spectators at Olympic events to 10,000, but insisted the games would start on July 23rd. A court in Brussels chastised AstraZeneca for breaching its contract with the EU on vaccines, but did not support the EU’s demand that the drug company deliver 120m doses by the end of June. Calls were made for the British government to publish its risk assessment of the recent g7 summit it hosted in Cornwall, after a surge of infections were…