In Russia inflation is under control, wages are on the up and supposedly tough sanctions have been successfully skirted. Why is the pariah economy proving so resilient? Despite the nasty rhetoric of many of its politicians, Britain has turned out to be quite good at assimilating immigrants (09:29). And how lorries can be electrified faster (19:11).
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The Intelligence: Bear up

Every weekday our global network of correspondents makes sense of the stories beneath the headlines. We bring you surprising trends and tales from around the world, current affairs, business and finance &mdash; as well as science and technology. &nbsp; Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

News & Politics

News

When a story about UFOs came across the desk of The Economist’s Michelle Hennessy, she was sceptical. A powerful cultural legacy of flying saucers and aliens is hard to ignore. But a recent flurry of interest from U.S defence agencies and NASA, stress the serious and scientific task of shedding light on what’s happening in the skies above.
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The Weekend Intelligence: Capturing UFOs

France’s president is known for pronouncements of grand scope with one eye toward history. But when our journalists visited him at his residence his assessment of the state of the world was bleak—a dark, prophetic call to arms. In this special episode, we ask whether his view is accurate, whether his proposed solutions would work and whether he is the person to enact them.
Read the full transcript of our interview here.
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The Intelligence: Our meeting with Macron

When you look around the world, and at a wider set of measures, Generation Z are far better off than the popular narrative would have you believe. We examine what India’s push to soup up its nukes means for the global arms race (09:30). And even as global fertility rates fall, sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a relative baby boom (17:11).
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The Intelligence: The kids are alright, turns out

Ever since there have been smartphones and social media, there have been concerns about how they might be affecting children. Over the past decade, doctors have seen a decline in mental health in the young in much of the rich world. But whether that rise can be attributed to technology is still a matter of fierce debate. Nevertheless, demands are growing to proactively restrict teenagers’ access to phones and social media, just in case. How concerned should parents and teachers be? Or is this just another moral panic? 
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Tom Wainwright, The Economist's technology and media editor; Clare Fernyhough, co-founder of Smartphone Free Childhood; Carol Vidal of Johns Hopkins University; Pete Etchells, a psychologist at Bath Spa University and the author of “Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time”.
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Babbage: Teens and their screens

A dramatic overnight raid in New York City was just one sign that protests at American universities are set to continue—a clear historical echo in an already-fraught election year. We ask why a niche newspaper run by Japan’s communist party has so much influence (13:05). And a study of new books on loneliness reveals both the benefits and drawbacks of solitude (20:39).
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The Intelligence: Bear up

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