The Economist - June 13th 2026

Год выпуска: июнь 2026

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 88

A World Cup paradox

The global fragmentation of fun

• The fragmentation of fun is rewriting the rules of entertainment—and of soft power: leader, page 7.
• Global platforms drive a surge in domestic content: briefing, page 14.
• Who should win the World Cup? Page 80. And who will win it? Page 57.
• The tournament has always been beset by scandal, page 59.

Donald Trump’s least bad option in Iran

• America’s president must do what it takes to reopen the strait: leader, page 8.
• Iran’s cautious regime is taking a risky bet, page 43.
• How Israel is frustrating Mr Trump, page 44.
• A robotic rescue at sea, page 45.

China’s two-tier economy

• It should change its costly growth model: leader, page 9.
• China is innovative. Its economy is a mess, page 69.
• A notorious university-entrance exam is changing, page 40.

When AI can improve itself

• Approaching the singularity, page 76.
• Software-as-a-Service once ate the world. Now it is in danger of eating itself, page 61.
• Silicon Valley needs to get God: By Invitation, page 13.
• Sharing AI wealth: Free Exchange, page 75.

Road-tripping with Tocqueville

• To celebrate America’s birthday, get behind the wheel: leader, page 10.
• Why “Democracy in America” is worth re-reading, page 23.

The world this week Politics

• America launched “self-defence strikes” against Iran after Donald Trump blamed the Islamic regime for downing an army Apache helicopter. Iran retaliated by attacking American bases and several other sites across the Middle East. Most of the missiles and drones were intercepted. Mr Trump warned that Iran would have to “pay the price” for taking too long to negotiate a peace deal; Pete Hegseth, America’s defence secretary, said “we’ll negotiate with bombs”. Before that, Israel bombed Iran for the first time since April. Iran had triggered the Israeli response by firing missiles and drones at northern Israel. That followed Israeli strikes on Hizbullah, an Iranian-proxy militia, in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.
• The funeral was held for a Palestinian baby killed by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. The baby was in a car that the soldier apparently perceived to be a threat and fired at as it approached a checkpoint, though the baby’s father said he had stopped the vehicle. The Israel Defence Forces admitted that the family were “uninvolved civilians” and offered its “deep sorrow”. Israeli military police have opened an investigation.
• Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo said more than 100 people have died of Ebola since mid-May. Meanwhile, police in the Kenyan town of Nanyuki fired tear-gas at protesters who continue to demonstrate against the construction of an Ebola quarantine centre for American citizens based in Africa.
• Some of the worst political violence in years erupted in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. At least nine people died and hundreds were displaced amid fighting between soldiers loyal to Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Somalia’s president since 2022, and militias supported by opposition figures. Mr Mohamud’s four-year term expired on May 15th, but he has refused to step down. In March the government extended his term by a year.
• In South Africa more migrants were repatriated to their home countries amid a wave of violence directed at foreign workers. Anti-migrant groups have warned illegal migrants to leave by June 30th. Cyril Ramaphosa, the president, announced new measures to crack down on unlawful immigration, but also said there was “no space for xenophobia” in South Africa. Separately, at least 12 people were killed when gunmen opened fire on a slum near Johannesburg.
• A horrific knife attack by a Sudanese migrant in Belfast, Northern Ireland, sparked anti-migrant violence. Groups of masked men targeted migrants’ homes and set cars and businesses ablaze. Antimigrant protests also flared up in other parts of Britain, including Southampton, which endured riots recently following the release of video footage showing Henry Nowak’s death, and an incompetent police response, after a knife attack by a British Sikh.

Not-so-vague threats

• Armenia held its first general election since its defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan in 2023. The conflict and peace deal were issues at the election, which returned the ruling Civil Contract Party to power with 50% of the vote. The result gives new impetus to the push by Nikol Pashinyan, the prime minister, to forge closer ties to the West. Vladimir Putin had intervened in the campaign, urging Armenians to stay in the Eurasian Economic Union of post-Soviet states. The Russian president also pointed out, somewhat ominously, that Russia supplies Armenia with cheap gas.
• An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 hit the southern Philippines, killing at least 37 people. An earthquake off the coast of Cuba was the strongest in the island for 146 years; the tremors were felt in Florida and Mexico.
• Reports emerged that women in the Afghan province of Herat were being arrested for not complying with a directive to wear full hijab dress. Attempts by officials from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to round up women for not obeying the rules were met with rare protests, resulting in at least two deaths.
• Pakistan carried out fresh air strikes on Afghanistan, killing at least 13 people, many of them children, according to the Taliban government in Kabul. Pakistan agreed in March to a ceasefire in the most serious fighting between the two countries in decades. Pakistan says it is targeting terrorists based in Afghanistan and had killed 26 militants.
• Xi Jinping, China’s leader, visited North Korea for the first time in seven years for talks with Kim Jong Un, the country’s dictator. China’s commitment to North Korea’s “socialist cause will not change”, said Mr Xi, nor will their safeguarding of “common interests”. North Korea has resumed transport links that were suspended during the pandemic. Mr Kim is also forging closer ties with Russia, and has sent North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine.
• In Peru the outcome of the final round of the presidential election was too close to call, with Keiko Fujimori, the conservative, and Roberto Sánchez, the left-wing candidate, in a statistical tie. The result may not be known for weeks.

Carte Blanche

• Donald Trump formally nominated Todd Blanche to be attorney-general, kick-starting what promises to be a fiery confirmation process in the Senate. Mr Blanche used to be Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, representing him in the hushmoney trial in 2024. He has been acting attorney-general since April, when the president sacked Pam Bondi. Mr Blanche recently defended a provision that would give Mr Trump, his family and companies immunity from tax audits.
• A federal judge overturned Mr Trump’s policy of charging $100,000 for new applications for H-1B visas, which are favoured by American technology firms when hiring foreign graduates. The judge said the administration had presented no evidence that the fee was a “regulatory payment” and not a tax, in which case it fell under Congress’s remit. The White House is to appeal against the decision.
• The results from local elections in San Francisco confirmed that voters roundly rejected a measure to increase taxes on highly paid executives. The measure, nicknamed the “overpaid CEO act”, was proposed amid surging profits for AI and tech companies in San Francisco and was supported by leftwing politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders. But it was opposed by Daniel Lurie, the city’s mayor, who warned of job losses should it pass. In November Californians will vote on a measure to impose a 5% wealth tax on billionaires.

The world this week Business

• OpenAI submitted a draft prospectus for its initial public offering, firing the starting gun on another blockbuster stockmarket flotation. The firm said it had announced the filing because it expected it to be leaked, and had not yet decided on the timing of its IPO. Reports suggest it could come as early as September and target a market capitalisation of $1trn. Anthropic recently filed papers for its market debut. Meanwhile, SpaceX prepared its first sale of shares. The most eagerly anticipated IPO in years was said to be heavily oversubscribed.

A dampener on the party

• Although investors were gripped by IPO euphoria, stock markets had a rocky few days, with tech-share prices falling the most since Donald Trump’s Liberation Day announcement of tariffs in April 2025. The NASDAQ Composite dropped by 4.2% on June 5th, and the S&P500 declined by 2.6%. Markets bounced around in the following days. South Korea’s stock market was particularly volatile, causing a brief suspension in trading, as share prices in the country’s memory-chipmakers swung wildly.
• One of those Korean chipmakers, SK Hynix, was reported to be preparing to list shares in America for the first time in August. The company acknowledged that it plans to sell American depositary receipts (enabling US investors to buy its shares) but said the details had not yet been decided.
• The global demand for chips used in data centres and advanced electronics helped drive China’s exports up by 19.4% in May, year on year. The value of automated data-processing equipment sent abroad soared by 66.1%, but car exports also accelerated, by 39%.
• The boss of BYD, a Chinese maker of electric vehicles, said his company would probably become the world’s biggest carmaker within five years.
• Wang Chuanfu’s comments were intended to reassure investors spooked by BYD’s falling share price amid a price war for EVs in China. In order to achieve its ambitions, BYD is rolling out ultra-fast batterycharging stations for its cars in China and Europe that can provide some models with a 70% charge in five minutes.
• America’s annual inflation rate jumped to a three-year high of 4.2% in May, from 3.8% in April. Energy prices accounted for 60% of the rise in the monthly rate. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, was more subdued at 2.9%.
• The International Air Transport Association issued a report on the effects of the Iran war on the aviation industry. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has “fractured the architecture” of global energy supply, it said, and jet-fuel prices have soared since late February. The combined profit of global airlines is now expect ed to be $23bn this year, a reduction by half from IATA’s previous forecast. Any prediction of a swift return to normal jet-fuel flows is “illusory”, it warned.
• A bidding war broke out for Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), which is based in Italy and is the world’s oldest bank, tracing its roots back to 1472. Banco BPM, Italy’s fourth-largest lender, proposed a “merger of equals” with MPS, only to see Intesa Sanpaolo, the country’s largest bank, submit a higher offer the next day that would create a European banking colossus worth about €130bn ($150bn). Intesa proposes to keep just half of MPS’s branches, and sell the rest of the retail operations to another bank.
• In France, a consortium of Bouygues Telecom, Orange and Iliad agreed to buy SFR, a rival telecom company, for €20.4 billion ($23.5bn). SFR is part of a sprawling telecoms and media empire run by Patrick Drahi, one of France’s richest men, and the sale will help reduce the pile of debt held by his Altice group. But regulatory approval for the deal, which reduces France’s big telecom operators from four to three, is not assured.
• GSK, formerly GlaxoSmithKline, agreed to buy Nuvalent, an American biotech firm specialising in cancer, for $10.6bn. It is the British drug company’s biggest-ever takeover of another firm.

Sex substitutes

• Smartphones could account for some of the decline in America’s fertility rate, according to a working paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research. The researchers looked at the roll-out of the iPhone from 2007 to 2011, when it was sold only by AT&T, allowing them to “identify its effect from variation in AT&T’s mobile-broadband coverage”. The researchers found that “Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44”. Possible explanations include a decline in personal interactions, availability of contraceptive advice on phones and more access to pornography.

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