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Black Friday and Cyber Monday—limited-time offer

Spotting AI texts can be tricky. This is in part because you need evidence beyond a few words or dashes. Our investigation helps to unravel the differences between writing by man and machine Video: Timo Lenzen

Our interactive tool compares location premiums across more than 300 cities. Register for free to find out which city has the best pay for like-for-like work

Wildfires have broken out not only in France’s southern forests known to be at risk but in places like Fontainebleau, outside Paris. In Spain, the damaged area stands at 170,000 hectares, more than six times the figure for the same period last year, Video: Getty Images

Every classicist has their wishlist for what might yet turn up: a poem by Sappho, a lost tragedy by Aeschylus, a lost book of Livy. They are, alas, unlikely to have their wishes granted

The Trump administration has woken up to the massive risks the technology poses to national security. That seems to have caused its latest spat with the AI firm Video: Timo Lenzen

As humans’ role in the AI production process shrinks, they may lose control. The end result could be models trained by models, to achieve goals set by models, whose safety is verified only by models Illustration: Timo Lenzen

The jobs apocalypse is not yet here. But if governments wait for conclusive evidence before creating a safety-net, it will be too late

Ready for your next page turner? Here’s a list of our favourite books of the year so far Video: TImo Lenzen

A good cover serves as a form of signalling, demonstrating that the applicant cares enough about the position to go through a laborious process. Or, at least, it used to Illustration: Erik Carter

Unlike other think-tanks, Claremont does not churn out many policy papers. It aims to teach young conservatives what has gone awry in America. If that sounds grandiose, it is Video: Fromm Studio

Until now, even the best robots struggled to make sense of complex environments as quickly as humans. That may be about to change Video: Timo Lenzen

Two years on from the October 7th 2023 attack in Israel, it is worth looking closer to understand the full wretched effects of the war Video: Getty Images

Today more than 2.5trn PDFs float in the ether. But will the format survive the AI revolution?

Officials in India are concerned by the financial risks posed by money-based gaming. But the government’s ban on fantasy sports platforms will have far-reaching consequences—and the biggest loser may be the state itself Illustration: Mathieu Labrecque

The World Ahead 2026 will be the 40th edition of The Economist’s future-gazing annual. It’s been a wild ride. Before we publish our latest issue, we look back at what we got wrong over the decades, and what we got right

Anyone can enter our “Cover Story” competition. Share this post with any budding designers among your friends and family. The three best entries will receive a prize

British politics is confusing and hard to predict, but it is not random and it leaves the country on the threshold of many dramatically divergent futures. To illustrate this, we’ve picked several scenarios

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“Money won’t matter in 2036,” claims Elon Musk on the latest episode of The Insider. He tells Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, how people will live when AI and robots can do every job and why he expects deflation, not inflation:

“There really won't be anything that AI can’t do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps,” says Elon Musk. He tells Zanny Minton Beddoes that artificial intelligence may exceed the sum of human intelligence in about five years. Tune in to The Insider from 6pm London time:

.Elon Musk believes that Britain is heading for “a reckoning”. Zanny Minton Beddoes challenges him on that claim, his support for the far right and on the picture he paints of Britain to his hundreds of millions of followers. Watch the full Insider interview:

War has destroyed huge swathes of Sudan, which is now in its fourth year of a brutal, forgotten civil conflict. The Economist’s Tom Gardner went on a rare trip to the country to report on the world’s worst humanitarian crisis:

Billionaires get a bad rap. But the share of those who have made their fortunes from political access and inheritance appears to be declining. Instead there is an increase in those who made their money from genuine entrepreneurship:

.Elon Musk says there’s a “good chance” China will be the world leader in AI. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also speaks to Zanny Minton Beddoes about what’s holding back Chinese models—and why banning them won’t stop China from overtaking America. Watch the full Insider interview:

“People don’t realise that what I’m saying will come to pass.” In a conversation with Zanny Minton Beddoes, Elon Musk shares his vision for the future, discusses his foray into politics and his attitude towards Europe. Watch the full interview here or on YouTube:

Elon Musk claims there are far more unsafe places in Europe than there are in America. But the data doesn’t bear this out. Sonny Loughran, our Britain correspondent, compares homicide- and knife-violence rates in the two continents. Watch The Economist’s interview with Elon Musk:

China is far more optimistic about AI than America is. On the latest episode of The Insider our top editors discuss why the two countries see the same technology so differently and what our reporting on the ground says about how Chinese workers are really feeling

.Elon Musk says he “got too involved in politics”. On the latest episode of The Insider, he admits to Zanny Minton Beddoes that he got “carried away”, but still defends what DOGE set out to do:

Prediction-market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket let their users bet on world events. But when outcomes are ambiguous, who gets to decide what happened?

From sabotage attacks to assisting Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, poses a unique security problem for Europe

In an interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, Elon Musk explains the challenges with taking SpaceX public. Watch the full conversation on The Insider:

An American benchmark suggests that households should spend no more than 7% of their gross income on child care, so The Economist calculated where in the world it’s actually affordable. Tap the link to see how expensive child care is where you live: